Duchy of Benevento

The Duchy of Benevento was the Lombard south from 571 to 1077, the longest lived Lombard state in Italy. Zotto led his fara south in 571 and ringed Benevento's hill with a wall; cut off from the Lombard north by Rome's duchy, his dukes ruled alone, electing and murdering with Lombard freedom. Grimoald rose from Benevento's duke to king of all Lombards in 662 and held the south with it. After Charlemagne took Pavia in 774, Arechis refused the Frankish yoke, took the title princeps, built Santa Sofia's star vaulted church, and kept Benevento independent for three centuries more, even split in 849 into Benevento and Salerno halves that warred like brothers. Monte Cassino's monks wrote its chronicles; its script, the Beneventan hand, outlasted its state. The Normans ended it: Robert Guiscard, who had taken everything else in the south, accepted Benevento from the pope in surrender's reverse, and in 1077 the city passed to Saint Peter, its Lombard dukes becoming papal legend and its bronze doors still shutting on the cathedral.