Kingdom of the Lombards

The Lombards crossed the Alps from Pannonia in 568 under King Alboin and within a few years had broken Byzantine rule across much of the Italian peninsula. Their kingdom, remembered as the Regnum Langobardorum, was centred on Pavia, which fell in 572 and remained the royal capital; its rulers were chosen by the highest aristocracy rather than through strict hereditary succession. The realm was divided into a northern core, Langobardia Maior, and the two southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which enjoyed wide autonomy and were separated from the north by Byzantine Ravenna and the duchy of Rome. After Alboin's murder and a decade in which the dukes ruled without a king, Autari and then Agilulf rebuilt royal authority around 584 to 616, and the gradual conversion of the Lombards from Arianism and paganism to Catholicism eased their integration with the Roman population. Rothari's edict of 643 codified Lombard custom in Latin, while Liutprand, who reigned from 712 to 744, brought the kingdom to its height, legislated widely and intervened in papal and Byzantine affairs. Aistulf took Ravenna in 751, but the Franks under Pepin the Short forced him to hand it to the papacy. In 774 Charlemagne captured Pavia, deposed Desiderius and added the title King of the Lombards to his own, though Benevento escaped Frankish rule. The kingdom left a durable mark through the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the survival of Lombard law and the later Regnum Italiae within the Holy Roman Empire.