The Lombards or Longobards were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.
Pope Paul I was Pope from 29 May 757 to his death in 767. He first served as a Roman deacon and was frequently employed by his brother, Pope Stephen II, in negotiations with the Lombard kings.
Desiderius was a king of the Lombard Kingdom of northern Italy, ruling from 756 to 774. He is chiefly known for his connection to Charlemagne, who married his daughter and conquered his realm.
The Duchy of Benevento was the southernmost Lombard duchy in the Italian peninsula, centered on Benevento, a city in Southern Italy. Being cut off from the rest of the Lombard possessions by the papal Duchy of Rome, Benevento was practically independent from the start. Only during the reigns of Grimoald, King of the Lombards and the kings from Liutprand on was the duchy closely tied to the kingdom. After the fall of the kingdom, however, alone of Lombard territories it remained as a rump state, and maintained its de facto independence for nearly three hundred years, though it was divided after 849.
Alcek or Alzeco was allegedly a son of Kubrat and led the Altsikurs to Ravenna that later settled in the villages of Gallo Matese, Sepino, Boiano and Isernia in the Matese mountains of southern Italy.
Arechis II was a Duke of Benevento, in Southern Italy. He sought to expand the Beneventos' influence into areas of Italy that were still under Byzantine control, but he also had to defend against Charlemagne, who had conquered northern Italy.
Leo Marsicanus or Ostiensis, also known as Leone dei Conti di Marsi, was a nobleman and monk of Monte Cassino around 1061 and Italian cardinal from the 12th century.
Gisulf I was the duke of Benevento from 689, when his brother Grimoald II died. His father was Romuald I. His mother was Theodrada, daughter of Lupus of Friuli, and she exercised the regency for him for the first years of his reign.
Romuald II the Younger was the son of Gisulf I and Winiperga. He succeeded as duke of Benevento on the death of his father, which is dated variously as 698, 706, or 707. According to Paul the Deacon, Gisulf reigned 17 years, which would imply his death in 698, but Paul also mentions acts which seem certainly to have occurred around 705. He gives Romuald a reign of 26 years, which puts his death in either 724, 731, or 732.
Gregory was a nephew of King Liutprand of the Lombards, who appointed him Duke of Benevento in 733 or thereabouts after removing both the usurper Audelais and the minor Gisulf II. He governed the "people of the Samnites," as Paul the Deacon calls the Beneventans, for seven years.
Gisulf II was the third last duke of Benevento before the fall of the Lombard kingdom. He ruled from 743, when King Liutprand came down and removed Godescalc, to his death up to ten years later.
Gisulf II was the Duke of Friuli from around 591 to his death. He was the son and successor of Gisulf I.
Grasulf II, son of Duke Gisulf I, was the Duke of Friuli after the assassination of his nephews, Tasso and Kakko, in Oderzo in 616 or 617. His other nephews, Radoald and Grimoald, left Friuli for the Duchy of Benevento because they did not wish to live under Grasulf. Nothing more is known about Grasulf and the date of his death is uncertain. He died at Cividale.
Ariulf was the second Duke of Spoleto from 592 to his own death.
The Kingdom of the Lombards also known as the Lombard Kingdom; later 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 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.
Thrasimund I or Transamund I was the Count of Capua and then Duke of Spoleto, a faithful follower of Grimoald I of Benevento.
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.
Adelperga was a Lombard noblewoman, daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards, and his wife Ansa.
She was the third of four daughters of King Desiderius. Her elder sister Desiderata was a wife of Charlemagne.
