La storia del venerdì: the Lombards and the Southern Question

"La storia del venerdì" is a weekly column about curious, unknown and misknown historical facts, which will be published every Friday in Italian, then translated into English during the following week. I kept the Italian title because it's not translatable in English, playing with the word "storia", meaning both history and story. Enjoy the reading!

Year 569 a.C.: led by King Alboin, the Lombards have moved from Pannonia to Italy through Friuli. Worn out by the twenty years long Gothic War, fought between Justinian, the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, and Goths, holding on that time a kingdom in Italy, brought on their knees by famine and plagues, the Latin population of Italy is not capable to stand against the invasion. The Lombards settle without any plan and in an uneven way in three areas: the Padan Plain, Tuscany and the territories around the cities of Benevento and Spoleto. The Byzantines keep the coasts, Ravenna, the Pentapolis, Rome and a string of castles linking to the Adriatic coast, and the Major Islands.

The Lombards are a fragmented military society, one of the roughest barbarian people, described by historical sources as "fiercely alien" to the Roman society. Their leaders are Arians (Arianism has been declared heresy in 325 a.C.), while the people are pagans. Their settling in Italy has a violent impact on the Romans: the gentry is scattered and its lands confiscated by the Lombards military leaders, who become a landed aristocracy; same destiny happens to the Catholic Church's properties, which are handed out to the Arian Church.

The Romans' condition improves when the conquest and settling are over, especially after the Lombards convert to Catholicism, through a process begun by King Agilulf and the wife Theodelinda in 591 and completed in 653 when King Aripert abolishes the Arianism. In the VIII century, the two societies are ethnically mixed and, under King Liutprand, they find further strengthening.

It's King Liutprand who, taking advantage of the Empire weakness and of a riot happened in the year 727 against the Emperor Leo III-led iconoclasm, that snatches some territories to the Empire. Some of those territories are then offered to the Pope, to acknowledge his new political role or maybe to buy his support. But it is the Pope who calls for help when the Kings Aistulf first and Desiderius then, in the second half of the century, resume the expansion to Byzantium's detriment. The Franks answer the Pope's call and counterfeit the Lombards, depriving them of some territories, which the Franks hand over to the Pope. The fight between Franks and Lombards ends in the 774 with Charlemagne conquering the Lombards Kingdom. The Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento avoid the occupation and will last until the Normann conquest, completed in 1076 with the conquest of Salerno.

The Lombards seizure and then their submission by the Franks produced two consequences which still afflict Italy. The first is the beginning of the Pope's temporal power, funded on the donations of Liutprand (728) and of the Pippinids (756). The second consequence is the splitting of Italy into two halves never reunite until the XIX century, which developments and cultures proceded independently at different speeds since then: the Southern Question was born.