Since their arrival in the late sixth century the Lombards had settled on the land they conquered, adopting Latin as their language and establishing their own forms of government, including a legal code. In 698 they abandoned support for the Three Chapters and accepted the pope as their Christian leader. Yet the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento refused to recognize the Lombard king in Pavia as their superior, and failed to cooperate in a united campaign to bring the entire peninsula under their joint control. Even though they attacked both areas of the exarchate, Ravenna and Rome, they did so in separate campaigns that allowed imperial officials, such as Stephen, duke of Rome, to exploit their divisions in the 730s and 740s.1
These rivalries complicate the already confused chronology of King Liutprand’s Italian campaigns that are variously recorded in the Roman Book of the Pontiffs and in the later History of the Lombards by Paul the deacon. The latter presents King Liutprand as regally settling differences between dukes and bishops in Forum Iulii and Carniola, while also fighting victoriously against the troops of the exarchate in the Pentapolis. He shows the king distracted by conflicts with the Slavs in northern Istria and by requests from the Frankish ruler Charles Martel (the Hammer), for military assistance against Arab pirates in southern Gaul. In his relations with Rome, however, Liutprand was often torn between hostility to the military government of the imperial duke, and Christian devotion to the pope, as heir of St Peter.
In 729 when King Liutprand visited Rome he made a pilgrimage to the monastery of St Anastasios the Persian ad aquas Salvias in Rome, where he venerated the martyr’s head, a relic brought to the West by Greek monks.2 He later constructed a church at Corteolona dedicated to the saint, which was celebrated in a Latin inscription contrasting the schismatic Emperor Leo III and the pious Lombard King Liutprand.3 In addition to this condemnation of the iconoclast emperor, Liutprand also expanded and redecorated the church and monastery of St Peter in caelo aureo in Pavia where a Greek inscription commemorated an ‘igona’ of St Peter in gold.4 This golden icon was commissioned from a Byzantine artist in Rome, possibly a craftsman attached to the monastery of St Anastasios, together with dodecasyllable Greek verses. In the non-Greek environment of Pavia, the inscription might not be understood but it was a status symbol, a claim to superior culture.
During the mid730s King Liutprand may have succeeded in occupying Ravenna briefly, but not for long. In about 739, however, Liutprand’s nephew, Hildebrand, joined forces with Peredeo, duke of Vicenza, to make an unexpectedly serious attack on Ravenna, which may not have been sanctioned by the king. The two Lombard leaders captured the city, forced Eutychios, the exarch, to seek refuge in the area of the Venetiae and took prisoners: the consuls Leo, Sergius, Victor and Agnellus are named as hostages.5 When Pope Gregory III (731–41) became aware of the exarch’s plight he wrote to the patriarch of Grado in Istria requesting military help to restore control in Ravenna.6 His tone is virulently anti-Lombard and rather pro-Byzantine, suggesting that the pope, like his predecessor, continued to believe that imperial forces would protect Rome, despite the estrangement provoked by the order to remove icons. The appeal was entirely successful, in that troops based in Istria loyal to the empire marched south to restore Ravenna to imperial control and the exarch to his palace.7 In an effective military campaign they killed Peredeo, captured Hildebrand and reinstated Eutychios.8
At the same time as the pope learned about Hildebrand and Peredeo’s temporary capture of Ravenna, he was also threatened by Lombard activity nearer to Rome. In 739 Duke Transamund of Spoleto had rebelled against King Liutprand, who marched on Spoleto, installed his own candidate as duke and forced Transamund into exile in Rome. Liutprand’s aim, however, was to capture Rome and he tried to exploit Transamund’s presence there to achieve it. Within the city Duke Stephen, the imperial commander, in conjunction with Pope Gregory, refused to hand Transamund over, and Liutprand began to blockade Rome by capturing four key cities within the Roman duchy. The pope resolved this threat by skilful negotiation, and the Lombard king retired back to his capital at Pavia.9 Gregory knew, however, that this was only a temporary retreat and that Liutprand’s determination to capture Rome would result in further attacks. At Gregory III’s death in November 741, his successor Zacharias inherited a critical situation.
Zacharias was another learned pope of Greek origin, trained in Rome, who exemplified the tradition of electing spiritual leaders who knew Greek, could provide expert criticism of Monothelete theology and championed the primacy of St Peter.10 He was a particularly gifted Hellenist who translated the Dialogues of Gregory the Great into Greek, which proved remarkably popular among eastern Christian readers. He also commissioned the painting of a map of the world in the Lateran palace. During his reign, Pope Zacharias assumed a key position in Italian politics and his personal assistance was sought to resolve all subsequent problems between the exarchate and the Lombards. His immediate challenge was to regain possession of the four fortified sites recently captured by King Liutprand: Amelia, Orte, Bomarzo and Blera, and to assert papal control over the surrounding area.11
In a series of diplomatic initiatives and journeys, Zacharias secured not only the return of these four sites, but also ‘the patrimony of Sabina, which had been stolen early thirty years ago, those of Narni too and Osimo and Ancona, along with Numana and the valley called Magna in the territory of Sutri’. These properties became the tentative beginnings of territory later known as the Papal States. They were called domuscultae, estates to be held in perpetuity by the church of Rome, with the aim of generating supplies to be distributed to the poor, as well as additional resources for the maintenance of the papal court.12
As a result of the Lombard– papal alliance, prisoners were freed including the four consuls captured by Hildebrand in his earlier attack on Ravenna.13 But in 742–3 Liutprand focused more serious attacks on Ravenna, which provoked Exarch Eutychios and Archbishop John V to unite with all the people of the Pentapolis and Emilia in begging Pope Zacharias to intercede with the king.14 The pattern of papal diplomacy was now repeated in an effort to curb further Lombard aggression against Ravenna.
First, Pope Zacharias sent an embassy to Liutprand to try and restore Cesena, a castle on the frontier between Lombard and imperial territory, to the exarchate. The king had already announced his capture of the site to Constantinople and sent the papal party back unsuccessful. Zacharias then set out to meet the Lombard leader in person, leaving Duke Stephen in charge of Rome. The papal party crossed the Apennines via the ancient Via Flaminia (or perhaps by the military road via Todi and Perugia15) and Eutychios came to meet the pope at a church in Aquila, 80km from Ravenna. Together they proceeded to the city and all the people, ‘men and women of Ravenna, both sexes and every age’ came out to greet him as their shepherd.16 It was on this very important visit that Zacharias dedicated an altar cloth to the church of S Apollinare in Classe; Agnellus describes it as ‘of alithine [pure] purple wonderfully decorated with pearls and his name is written there’.17
From Ravenna, Zacharias sent another embassy to Liutprand to inform him that he intended to visit him. Although the envoys were told at Imola that the papal party would be prevented from entering Lombard territory and warned the pope of this danger, Zacharias insisted in making his way to Pavia, where another round of ceremonial meetings, Masses and negotiations took place. As a result, Liutprand agreed to give up some land around Ravenna and twothirds of the territory of Cesena, reserving onethird for himself until his ambassadors returned from Constantinople. The peoples of Ravenna and the Pentapolis thus ‘were filled with grain and wine’, which suggests that Liutprand restored land that had previously formed part of the exarchate to the exarch’s control.18
Pope Zacharias also wrote a synodical letter to the church of Constantinople and another for Constantine V, who had inherited imperial power on the death of his father Leo III in June 741.19 These letters have not survived but they probably urged the new emperor to give up the policy of iconoclasm. When the papal envoys arrived in the capital, probably in 742, they found that Constantine’s brother-in-law, Artabasdos, had proclaimed himself emperor in the city. The envoys duly presented their letter to him and reported the situation to Rome. But young Constantine mustered troops in Asia Minor and fought his way back into Constantinople in November 743. He then pardoned the papal apocrisiarii for having presented their letters to the usurper and made a donation of two estates at Ninfa and Norma to the church of Rome. These were added to the papal domuscultae.20
In his diplomatic contacts with the eastern capital Pope Zacharias acted entirely independently of the exarch, effectively taking over leadership in Italy from the figure of purely nominal authority appointed by the emperor in Constantinople. The exarchate in northern Italy was reduced to one city, Ravenna, while the duchy of Rome was expanded and developed under the pope’s guidance. While the Lombards remained a constant source of anxiety to both, there was no doubt about which had the better capacity to resist hostile ambitions.
King Liutprand’s death in 744 inaugurated a brief respite in Lombard attacks on Ravenna. But the hostile net was closing around the city and, in 749, his successor Ratchis advanced against Perugia, threatening to blockade this critically important castle on the military road linking Ravenna with Rome. Again Pope Zacharias set out to restrain him and ‘at the cost of very many gifts to the king . . . and with the Lord’s assistance’ Ratchis withdrew from the blockade.21 Indeed, he also decided to withdraw from public life; some days later he went to Rome where he abdicated his regal authority and embraced the monastic life.22 This rapid transformation from hostile military ruler to submissive monk occurred under additional pressures from his half-brother, Aistulf, who had inherited his position as duke of Friuli and advocated a more aggressive Lombard policy against Ravenna and Rome.23 Early in July 749 Aistulf was acclaimed king.
In the East, once Constantine V had put down the rebellion of Artabasdos, he remained preoccupied by Arab campaigns against Constantinople, which continued even after a major Byzantine victory at Akroinon in Anatolia in 740. He also faced Bulgarian threats to the empire’s western border, which prevented him from sending any military support to the exarch in Ravenna.24 Instead the emperor cultivated better relations with Pippin, king of the Franks, trying to build an alliance against the Lombards.25 This was at least a coherent diplomatic policy, but in the short term it left Ravenna and Exarch Eutychios isolated. Although troops loyal to Constantinople remained in Istria and the Pentapolis, the exarch failed to employ them to resist the Lombards. Without any record of a battle, Aistulf entered the city and issued his first decree in palatio (from the palace) in July 751.26 Eutychios escaped to Naples, leaving the archbishop to negotiate the terms of the Lombard occupation. This put an end to Ravenna’s long role as the imperial capital in Italy.27
When Emperor Constantine learned that his western capital had fallen to the Lombards, he realized that they would not only control the exarchate of Ravenna but would also threaten the remaining imperial territory in southern Italy. He therefore acted to consolidate Byzantine control over Sicily and Calabria, instructing officials to occupy rich local estates there known as the papal patrimonies – lands that had been attached to the church of Rome for centuries and supplied it with food stuffs, building materials and rents. All the revenues and resources of these estates were to be transferred to the public treasury and were to be collected by imperial officials.28 While the precise date for the confiscation is not recorded, the neat way in which the loss of the exarchate of Ravenna in the north of Italy was compensated by the acquisition of papal patrimonies in the south suggests the period immediately after 751.29 As a result, Greekspeaking communities and orthodox monasteries remained predominant in southern Italy for centuries.