The destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom did not free
Italy of the Germans. Soon after Justinian's death the country was again
overrun, this time by the Lombards. The name of these invaders (in Latin, Langobardi)
may have been derived from the long beards that gave them such a ferocious
aspect. The Lombards were the last of the Germanic peoples to quit their
northern wilderness and seek new homes in sunny Italy. They seized the territory
north of the river Po—a region ever since known as Lombardy-- and established
their capital at Pavia. The Lombards afterwards made many settlements in
central and southern Italy, but never succeeded in subduing the entire
peninsula.
LOMBARD RULE IN ITALY
The rule of the Lombards at first bore hardly on Italy,
which they treated as a conquered land. In character they seem to been far less
attractive than their predecessors the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Many of them
were still heathen when they entered Italy and others were converts to the
Arian form of Christianity. In course of time, however, the Lombards
accepted Roman Catholicism and adopted the customs of their subjects. They even
forgot their Germanic language and learned to speak Latin. The Lombard kingdom
lasted over two centuries, until it was overthrown by the Franks.
RESULTS OF THE LOMBARD INVASION
The failure of the Lombards to conquer all Italy had
important results in later history. Sicily and the extreme southern part of the
Italian peninsula, besides large districts containing the cities of Naples,
Rome, Genoa, Venice, and Ravenna, continued to belong to the Roman Empire in
the East. The rulers at Constantinople could not exercise effective control
over their Italian possessions, now that these were separated from one another
by the Lombard territories. The consequence was that Italy broke up into a
number of small and practically independent states, which never combined into
one kingdom until our own time. The ideal of a united Italy waited thirteen
hundred years for its realization. [5]
[5] The modern kingdom of Italy dates from 1861-1870 A.D.