Lombard Kingdom

The last Germanic kingdom to invade Italy, and the reason Italy stayed divided for thirteen centuries. The Lombards entered the peninsula in 568, three years after Justinian's armies had finished a twenty-year war that left it devastated and thinly garrisoned, and took the north with little resistance. What they did not take mattered as much: Byzantine authority held Ravenna, Rome, the far south and a corridor between them, so the peninsula was split into interlocking Lombard and imperial zones that never resolved into a single state. Their kingdom was based at Pavia, with the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento in the centre and south operating almost independently of it. Rothari issued the first written Lombard law in 643, in Latin but recording Germanic custom including compensation tariffs and judicial duel. Liutprand in the eighth century came closest to unifying Italy, which is precisely what alarmed the papacy. When Aistulf took Ravenna in 751, Pope Stephen crossed the Alps and appealed to the Franks, and Pepin's donation of the recovered lands created the Papal States. Charlemagne finished the kingdom in 774, taking the iron crown for himself. Benevento survived as a Lombard principality for another three centuries. Paul the Deacon wrote their history after the fall. Pavia remained a royal capital under the Franks. The iron crown of Lombardy is kept at Monza. Their name is preserved in the region of Lombardy and, through medieval bankers, in London's Lombard Street. Their goldwork and the Tempietto at Cividale are the surviving art. Duchies became the model for later Italian city fragmentation.

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