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.
Rothari, of the house of Arodus, was king of the Lombards from 636 to 652; previously he had been duke of Brescia. He succeeded Arioald, who was an Arian like himself, and was one of the most energetic of Lombard kings. Fredegar relates that at the beginning of his reign he put to death many insubordinate nobles, and that in his efforts for peace he maintained very strict discipline.
Ratchis was the Duke of Friuli (739–744) and then King of the Lombards (744–749).
Agilulf, called the Thuringian and nicknamed Ago, was a duke of Turin and king of the Lombards from 591 until his death.
The Origo Gentis Langobardorum is a short, 7th-century AD Latin account offering a founding myth of the Longobard people. The first part describes the origin and naming of the Lombards, the following text more resembles a king-list, up until the rule of Perctarit (672–688).
Erchempert was a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy in the final quarter of the ninth century. He chronicled a history of the Lombard Principality of Benevento, in the Langobardia Minor, giving an especially vivid account of the violence in southern Langobardia. Beginning with Duke Arechis II (758-787) and the Carolingian conquest of Benevento, his history, titled the Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum degentium, stops abruptly in the winter of 888-889. Just one medieval manuscript of this text survives, from the early fourteenth century.
Garibald was the young son of Grimoald I of Benevento, king of the Lombards, and Theodota, daughter of Aripert I. After his father's death in 671, he reigned briefly for three months until the numerous adherents of Perctarit, his uncle, who had been exiled by Grimoald nine years earlier, besought their candidate to return and elected him, deposing the young king. He was the last Arian king in Europe.
Marepaphias was a Lombard title of Germanic origin meaning "master of the horse," probably somewhat analogous to the Latin title comes stabuli or constable. According to Grimm, it came from mar or mare meaning "horse" and paizan meaning "to put on the bit".
Saint Baudolino was a hermit who lived at the time of the Lombard king Liutprand in Forum Fulvii, a locality on the lower reaches of the river Tanaro in north-west Italy. He is said to have been the son of a noble family, but to have given all his wealth to the poor before moving to a miserable hut near the river. He is the patron saint of the nearby city of Alessandria, where his feast is celebrated on the Sunday following 10 November.
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.
Garibald I was Duke of Bavaria from 555 until 591. He was the head of the Agilolfings, and the ancestor of the Bavarian dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of the Lombards.
Wechtar, a Lombard from Vicenza, was the Duke of Friuli from 666 to 678. He took control of Friuli at the command of King Grimoald following the rebellion of Lupus and Arnefrit and the invasion of the Avars. According to Paul the Deacon, he was a mild and fair ruler.
Ferdulf or Fardulf, originally from the territories of Liguria, was the Duke of Friuli at some point between the end of the reign of Cunincpert (688-700) and the beginning of that of Aripert II (701-12). There is no evidence to associate his tenure to the year 705 alone or indeed to suggest that it was very brief.. Paul the Deacon described him as 'a man tricky and conceited' who had obtained the dukedom after the death of Duke Ado.
The Codex Gothanus 84 is a 10th/11th century Latin law parchment manuscript in two-column Carolingian minuscule and is one of two extant copies of a lost early ninth-century codex written at Fulda and commissioned by Eberhard of Friuli, probably about 830, from the scholar Lupus Servatus, abbot of Ferrières. It is held by the Gotha Research Library, hence its name.
The Duchy of Tuscia, initially known as the Duchy of Lucca, was a Lombard duchy in Central Italy, which included much of today's Tuscany. After the occupation of the territories belonging to the Byzantines, the Lombards founded this flourishing duchy which, among other centres, also included Florence. The capital of the duchy was Lucca, which was located along the Via Francigena, being also the city where the duke resided.
Austria was, according to the early medieval geographical classification, the eastern portion of Langobardia Major, the north-central part of the Lombard Kingdom, extended from the Adda to Friuli and opposite to Neustria. The partition had not only been territorial, but also implied significant cultural and political differences.
Neustria was, according to the early medieval geographical classification, the western portion of Langobardia Major, the north-central part of the Lombard Kingdom, extended from the Adda (river) to the Western Alps and opposite to Austria. The partition had not only been territorial, but also implied significant cultural and political differences.
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 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.
