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italy: the lombards, 568,90 131
Narses, who had been dismissed from his Italian command by the new
emperor. 29
The Lombards were unable to achieve the unifying conquest of all Italy
that had been possible for the Ostrogoths. This was because they failed to
take either Rome or Ravenna, and were faced with unremitting imperial
hostility. Some cities, such as Milan, capitulated without a fight; others; such
as Pavia, which held out for three years, offered spirited resistance. The
murder of king Alboin at Verona in 572 weakened the already stretched
political cohesion of the invaders. His murderers, who favoured a rapprochement
with the empire, fled with the royal treasure to the imperial governor
or exarch at Ravenna. Although a new king, unrelated to the previous
dynasty, was elected in the person of Cleph (572–3/4), his subsequent
murder undermined centralized authority amongst the Lombards entirely.
No new king was chosen for ten years, while regional potentates emerged
in the persons of the dukes (duces). Although initially royal appointees as
local military commanders, these men were able to establish themselves as
effectively independent rulers in the absence of a monarchy. Only when the
Frankish threat grew too great in the early 580s did the Lombard magnates
accept the need to recreate a central leadership, and thus to choose a new
king in the person of Authari (584–90), the son of Cleph. To reconstruct
the economic basis for the monarchy the dukes agreed to surrender a fixed
proportion of their assets to endow the revived royal house. In practice the
more numerous and territorially smaller northern duchies co-operated
more closely with the monarchy than the two large central and southern
Italian duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which may first have come into
being during the interregnum, and were physically much further removed
from the royal capital of Pavia. Not until the reign of Authari’s successor
Agilulf (590–616) was royal authority firmly imposed over the south.
The Frankish threat that had led to the recreation of the Lombard monarchy
was the product partly of the expansionary ambitions of king
Childebert II (575–96) and partly the product of imperial diplomacy. The
military and economic problems of the empire in the 580s meant that
large-scale intervention in Italy could not be undertaken from
Constantinople. However, the Franks, who had suffered from Lombard
raids across the Alps in the chaotic period of 568–70, were willing to act
for the emperor in return for subsidies. 30 Although Childebert II was prone
to take the imperial money and then fail to act, he did launch an expedition
in 585 and again in 590. In both cases Authari negotiated a withdrawal in
return for a formal submission and, doubtless, the payment of tribute.
29 Isidore of Seville, Chronica 402, ed. Mommsen MGH AA 11,p.476; Fredegar, Chronica iii.65, ed.
Kusternig, p. 134; Paul. Diac. Hist. Lang. ii.5, MGH SRG,pp.87–8.
30 Epist. Austras. 25, 31–48, ed. Gundlach, pp. 138–9, 141–52.
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