After Faroald, the Lombard duke of Spoleto, captured Classis, the port of Ravenna, Droctulf recaptured it for the Empire in 575–76. He was briefly imprisoned (Paul refers to a captivitas), but was released to the Empire and served as the commander (dux, duke) of the Byzantine post of Brescello (Reggio nell'Emilia), which guarded a bridge over the river Po leading to Classis, from around 584. Between 584 and 590, he warred extensively against Authari, king of the Lombards, who eventually forced him to retreat to Ravenna while the region of Brescello was taken by the Lombards and the walls of the city razed to the ground.
After his failure in Italy, Droctulf was called to the Balkans and Thrace to fend off the army of Slavs and Avars then besieging Adrianople (586). The Byzantines granted him burial in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, where his lengthy epitaph survived to be recorded by Paul.
Italian philosopher and literary critic Benedetto Croce referred to Droctulft's (lost) epitaph in Ravenna as ′poetry raising its head where you'd least expect it′ (′La poesia′, 1942).
Alboin was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effect on Italy and the Pannonian Basin; in the former his invasion marked the beginning of centuries of Lombard rule, and in the latter his defeat of the Gepids and his departure from Pannonia ended the dominance there of the Germanic peoples.
Paul the Deacon, also known as Paulus Diaconus, Warnefridus, Barnefridus, or Winfridus, and sometimes suffixed Cassinensis, was a Benedictine monk, scribe, and historian of the Lombards.
Pope Gregory II was the bishop of Rome from 19 May 715 to his death. His defiance of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian as a result of the iconoclastic controversy in the Eastern Empire prepared the way for a long series of revolts, schisms, and civil wars that eventually led to the establishment of the temporal power of the popes.
The Exarchate of Ravenna, also known as the Exarchate of Italy, was a lordship of the Eastern Roman Empire in Italy, from 584 to 751, when the last exarch was put to death by the Lombards. It was one of two exarchates established following the western reconquests under Emperor Justinian to more effectively administer the territories, along with the Exarchate of Africa.
Authari was king of the Lombards from 584 to his death. He was considered as the first Lombard king to have adopted some level of Romanitas (Roman-ness) and introduced policies that led to drastic changes, particularly in the treatment of the Romans and greater tolerance for the Christian faith.
Liutprand was the king of the Lombards from 712 to 744 and is chiefly remembered for his multiple phases of law-giving, in fifteen separate sessions from 713 to 735 inclusive, and his long reign, which brought him into a series of conflicts, mostly successful, with most of Italy. He is often regarded as the most successful Lombard monarch, notable for the Donation of Sutri in 728, which was the first accolade of sovereign territory to the Papacy.
Smaragdus was Exarch of Ravenna from 585 to 589 and again from 603 to 611.
Ratchis was the Duke of Friuli (739–744) and then King of the Lombards (744–749).
The Rule of the Dukes was an interregnum in the Lombard Kingdom of Italy (574/5–584/5) during which Italy was ruled by the Lombard dukes of the old Roman provinces and urban centres. The interregnum is said to have lasted a decade according to Paul the Deacon, but all other sources—the Fredegarii Chronicon, the Origo Gentis Langobardorum, the Chronicon Gothanum, and the Copenhagen continuator of Prosper Tiro—accord it twelve years. Here is how Paul describes the dukes' rule:
After his death the Langobards had no king for ten years but were under dukes, and each one of the dukes held possession of his own city, Zaban of Ticinum, Wallari of Bergamus, Alichis of Brexia, Euin of Tridentum, Gisulf of Forum Julii. But there were thirty other dukes besides these in their own cities. In these days many of the noble Romans were killed from love of gain, and the remainder were divided among their "guests" and made tributaries, that they should pay the third part of their products to the Langobards. By these dukes of the Langobards in the seventh year from the coming of Alboin and of his whole people, the churches were despoiled, the priests killed, the cities overthrown, the people who had grown up like crops annihilated, and besides those regions which Alboin had taken, the greater part of Italy was seized and subjugated by the Langobards.
Faroald I was the first Duke of Spoleto, which he established during the decade of interregnum that followed the death of Alboin's successor. He led the Lombards into the centre of the Italian peninsula while Zotto led them into the south.
The Kingdom of the Lombards, also known as the Lombard Kingdom and later as the Kingdom of all Italy, was an early medieval state established by the Lombards, a Germanic people, on the Italian Peninsula in the latter part of the 6th century. The king was traditionally elected by the very highest-ranking aristocrats, the dukes, as several attempts to establish a hereditary dynasty failed. The kingdom was subdivided into a varying number of duchies, ruled by semi-autonomous dukes, which were in turn subdivided into gastaldates at the municipal level. The capital of the kingdom and the center of its political life was Pavia in the modern northern Italian region of Lombardy.
Faroald II was the duke of Spoleto from 703, when he succeeded his own father Thrasimund I.
The Duchy of Friuli was a Lombard duchy in present-day Friuli, the first to be established after the conquest of the Italian peninsula in 568. It was one of the largest domains in Langobardia Major and an important buffer between the Lombard kingdom and the Slavs, Avars, and the Byzantine Empire. The original chief city in the province was Roman Aquileia, but the Lombard capital of Friuli was Forum Julii, modern Cividale.
The Duchy of Tridentum (Trent) was an autonomous Lombard duchy, established by Euin during the Lombard interregnum of 574–584 that followed the assassination of the Lombard leader Alboin. The stronghold of Euin's territory was the Roman city of Tridentum in the upper valley of the Adige, in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, where the duchy formed one of the marches of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy. There he shared power with the bishop, who was nominally subject to the Patriarch of Aquileia. In 574–75, Lombard raiding parties pillaged the valley of the Rhône, incurring retaliatory raids into the duchy by Austrasian Franks, who had seized control of the mountain passes leading into the kingdom of Burgundy. Euin was at the head of the army loyal to Authari that went into the territory of the duke of Friuli in Istria, c 589, and he was sent by Agilulf to make peace with the Franks his neighbors, in 591. After Euin's death c 595, Agilulf installed Gaidoald, who was a Catholic, rather than an Arian Christian. After some friction between king and duke, they were reconciled in 600. The separate Lombard duchy of Brescia was united with Tridentum in the person of Alagis, a fervent Arian and opponent of the Lombard king, Perctarit, who was killed in the battle of Cornate d'Adda (688).
In the Byzantine Empire, the Duchy of the Pentapolis was a duchy, a territory ruled by a duke (dux) appointed by and under the Exarch of Ravenna. The Pentapolis consisted of the cities of Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, Rimini and Sinigaglia. It lay along the Adriatic coast between the rivers Marecchia and Misco immediately south of the core territory of the exarchate ruled directly by the exarch, east of the Duchy of Perugia, another Byzantine territory, and north of the Duchy of Spoleto, which was part of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy. The duchy probably extended inland as far as the Apennine Mountains, perhaps beyond, and its southernmost town was Humana (Numera) on the northern bank of the Misco. The capital of the Pentapolis was Rimini and the duke was both the civil and military authority in the duchy.
Euin, also Ewin or Eoin, was the first Lombard Duke of Trent during the Rule of the Dukes, an interregnum (575–585) during which the Kingdom of Italy was ruled by its regional magnates, the dukes of the thirty or so cities. Euin participated in several significant wars during his long reign. The primary source for his career is Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum.
Among the Lombards, the duke or dux was the man who acted as political and military commander of a set of "military families", irrespective of any territorial appropriation.
Helmichis was a Lombard noble who killed his king, Alboin, in 572 and unsuccessfully attempted to usurp his throne. Alboin's queen, Rosamund, supported or at least did not oppose Helmichis' plan to remove the king, and after the assassination Helmichis married her. The assassination was assisted by Peredeo, the king's chamber-guard, who in some sources becomes the material executer of the murder. Helmichis is first mentioned by the contemporary chronicler Marius of Avenches, but the most detailed account of his endeavours derives from Paul the Deacon's late 8th-century Historia Langobardorum.
The Duchy of Perugia was a duchy in the Italian part of the Byzantine Empire. Its civil and military administration was overseen by a duke (dux) appointed by and under the authority originally of the Praetorian Prefect of Italy (554–584) and later of the Exarch of Ravenna (584–751). Its chief city and namesake was Perugia (Perusia), located at its centre. It was a band of territory connecting the Duchy of the Pentapolis to its northeast with the Duchy of Rome to its southwest, and separating the duchies of Tuscia and Spoleto, both parts of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy. It was of great strategic significance to the Byzantines since it provided communication between Rome, the city of the Popes, and Ravenna, the capital of the Exarchate. Since it cut off the Duke of Spoleto from his nominal overlord, the king ruling from Pavia, it also disturbed the Lombard kingdom, which was a constant thorn in the Byzantines' side. This strategic importance meant that many Lombard and Byzantine armies passed through it.
The Historia Langobardorum codicis Gothani, also called the Chronicon Gothanum, is a history of the Lombard people written at and for the court of King Pippin of Italy between the years 806 and 810. It is preserved in the 10th/11th century Codex Gothanus 84, from which its conventional Latin titles are derived; The chronicle is not titled in the manuscript. The text is ideologically pro-Carolingian, and among its sources are Isidore of Seville and possibly Jerome.
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