Italy and Spain, 773–801

Abstract

Just as the Saxon war had represented a traditional interest of his predecessors that Charles took up early in his reign and pursued with greater determination and more far-reaching consequences, so too did the question of relations with the Lombard kingdom in Italy constitute unfinished business that he had inherited from Pippin III. Frankish-Lombard relations extended back to at least the middle of the sixth century.¹ The Lombards had been permitted by the emperor Justinian I (527–65) to establish themselves in the former Roman province of Pannonia, south of the Danube, as a means of blocking a threatened Frankish expansion into the Balkans under Theudebert I (533–48). The latter’s son, Theudebald (548–55) had a Lombard wife, while the Lombard king Alboin (d. 572) who led their conquest of much of northern and central Italy in 568 was married to a Frankish princess called Chlodosuinth. She was expected to persuade her husband to convert to Christianity, and thus bring him and the Lombards under Frankish cultural and political influence.² Even after their Italian conquests, the Lombards had been in some danger of being subordinated to the eastern Frankish kings. The emperor Maurice (582–602) tried to encourage the Franks to intervene in Italy on the Empire’s behalf, in the way that Justinian I (527–65) had engineered a Frankish attack on the Ostrogoths in Italy in 539.³ Under the Austrasian king Childebert II (575–96) a series of Frankish expeditions were either sent against the Lombards or were threatened. These secured the Frankish kings substantial payments from Constantinople, while a submissive diplomacy on the part of the Lombard king Authari (584–90), together with payments of tribute, further enriched Childebert II and allowed him an at least nominal overlordship.⁴ This and the tribute may have come to an end in the reign of the next Lombard king, Agilulf (590–616), and there seems to have been little conflict between the kingdoms thereafter. Relations were on occasion quite warm. The Lombards for much of the seventh century were ruled by the Agilolfing dynasty, that was Frankish-Bavarian in origin, while in 737 Charles Martel negotiated for military help against the Arabs in Provence from the Lombard ruler Liutprand (712–44).⁵