Book 4

Chapter XLII.

Then Arioald, after he had held the sovereignty over the Langobards twelve years, departed this life, and Rothari [1] of the race of Arodus, received the kingdom of the Langobards. [2] And he was brave and strong, and followed the path of justice;[3] he did not, however, hold the right line of Christian belief, but was stained by the infidelity of the Arian heresy. [4] The Arians, indeed, say to their own ruin that the Son is less than the Father, and the Holy Spirit also is less than the Father and the Son. But we Catholics confess that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one and the true God in three persons, equal in power and the same in glory. In this time there were two bishops throughout almost all the cities [5] of the kingdom, one a Catholic and the other an Arian. In the city of Ticinum too there is shown, down to the present time, the place where the Arian bishop, who had his seat at the church of St. Eusebius, had a baptistery, while another bishop sat in the Catholic church. Yet this Ariari bishop, who was in the same city, Anastasius by name, became converted to the Catholic faith and afterwards governed the church of Christ. This king Rothari collected, in a series of writings, the laws of the Langobards which they were keeping in memory only and custom, [6] and he directed this code to be called the Edict. It was now indeed the seventy-seventh year from the time when the Langobards had come into Italy, as that king bore witness in a prologue to his Edict. [7] To this king, Arichis, the duke of Beneventum sent his son Aio. And when the latter had come to Ravenna on his way to Ticinum, such a drink was there given him by the malice of the Romans that it made him lose his reason, and from that time he was never of full and sound mind.[8]

[1] Hartmann (II, I, 235) considers that in this reckoning, the time is probably included in which Arioald was in insurrection against Adaloald. Rothari ascended the throne in 636 (Waitz).
[2] Fredegarius relates that after the death of Arioald his widow Gundiperga was asked, as Theudelinda had been, to choose his successor; that her choice fell upon Rothari, whom she invited to put away his wife and marry her, which he did, but afterwards confined her in one little room in the palace, while he lived with his concubines; that after five years' seclusion the Frankish king Clovis II interceded and she was restored to her queenly dignities (Hodgkin, VI, 165, 166). This story sounds like a repetition of the account of Gundiperga's disgrace during the reign of her first husband. It would seem that Rothari's marriage to Gundiperga, like that of Agilulf to Theudelinda was to add a certain claim of legitimacy to his pretensions to the throne and perhaps the fact that he was an Arian and his wife a Catholic led to the story above related (Hartmann, II, I, 239, 240).
[3] Fredegarius relates (Chron. 71) that at the beginning of his reign he put to death many insubordinate nobles and that in his efforts for peace he maintained very strict discipline (Pabst, 430, note 3).
[4] With the exception of Adaloald, all the kings of the Langobards up to this time had been Arians though their religious convictions were not strong, and they were net generally intolerant (Hodgkin VI, 144, 145). The beliefs of the invaders under Alboin were somewhat heterogeneous. Some of his followers were probably still tinctured with the remnants of heathenism, most of them were Arians, while the Noricans and Pannor.ians who accompanied him to Italy (II, 26 supra) were Catholics (Hegel, Stadteverfassung von Italien I, Ch. 3, p. 364). The conversion of the Langobards to the Catholic faith was promoted by their intermarriage with Roman wives. Theudelinda, who was a Catholic, had done much to further it. Even as early as the time of Gregory the Great there were Catholic bishops under the Langobards (id., p. 363).
[5] This is doubtful. Paul knew of some Arian bishops and doubtless he presumed, erroneously, the presence of Catholic bishops in the same places (Hartmann II, i, 278),
[6] Compare this with the Chronicon Gothanum, (M. G., LLIV, p.641) "Rothari reigned sixteen years and by him law and justice began with the Langobards and the judges first went through them in writing. For previously lawsuits were decided by custom, ('cadarfada') discretion and usage." Rothari's Edict was published Nov. 22d, 643. It was composed of 388 chapters. Although written in Latin, the greater part of this Edict was of purely Langobard origin. By this code the man who conspired against the king or deserted his comrades in battle must suffer death, but those accused of a capital offense might appeal to the wager of battle. If freemen conspired and accomplished the death of another they were to compound for the murder according to the rank of the person slain (Hodgkin, VI, 175 to 179). If any one should "place himself in the way" of a free woman or girl or injure her he must pay nine hundred solidi (540 pounds sterling). If any one should "place himself in the way " of a free man he must pay him twenty solidi, if he had not done him any bodily injury. These provisions indicated the high estimation in which the free women were held. If any one should ''place himself in the way'' of another man's slave or hand-maid or 'aldius' (half-free) he must pay twenty solidi to his lord. Bodily injuries were all catalogued, each of the teeth, fingers and toes being specially named and the price fixed for each. Many laws dealt specially with injuries to an aldius or to a household slave. These were not equivalent terms and it is generally believed that the vanquished Roman population were included in the first. A still lower class were the plantation slaves (Hodgkin, VI, 180-189). In the laws of succession, provision was made for illegitimate as well as legitimate children, though less in amount. No father could disinherit his son except for certain grievous crimes. Donations of property were made in the presence of the 'thing', an assembly of at least a few freemen, a survival of the folk-thing of the ancient Germans, from which comes the Latinized word 'thingare', to grant or donate, and one of the laws of Rothari provides that, if a man shall wish to "thing away '' his property to another, he must make the 'gairethinx' (spear donation), not secretly, but before freemen. The Langobard women always remained under some form of guardianship (pp.193 - 107). If a man should commit an immorality with a female slave ''belonging to the nations'' he must pay her lord twenty solidi, if with a Roman, twelve solidi, the Roman bond-woman being of less value than the slave of Teutonic or other origin. This is the only reference to Romans as such in Rothari's laws. If a slave or aldius married a free Langobard woman, her relatives had a right to slay her or sell her and divide her substance. No slave or aldius could sell properly without the consent of his master or patron. Slaves might be emancipated in various ways, but there were severe laws for the pursuit and restoration of fugitives (pp.204—211). In Judicial procedure, a system of compurgation prevailed as well as the wager of battle (pp. 224-230). Rothari's code was rude and barbarous to the last degree as compared with the elaborate system of Roman jurisprudence embodied in the laws of Justinian, under which the population of Italy had been living prior to the Langobard conquest. In Rothari's laws, although the rights of the clan, so important during the migration of the Langobards, became more and more subordinated to the rights of the state (Hartmann, II, 2, 11), the authority of the family still continued to be recognized as an important feature. The general assembly of freemen continued to add solemnity to important popular acts, such as the enactment of new laws or the selection of a king, although it was now manifestly impossible that such an assembly should consist, as in earlier times, of all those capable of bearing arms (id., pp. 12—13). Villari (Le Invasioni Barbariche in Italia, p. 310) insists that the indirect action of Roman jurisprudence appears in Rothari's laws, not only in the Latin language in which they were written, in some Justinian-like phrases, and in an arrangement to some extent systematical, but also in certain provisions which he thinks cannot be of Germanic origin. He adds (p. 311) that it cannot be conceived how the Langobards could have destroyed a system of jurisprudence established for centuries which had created among the conquered Italians a number of legal relations unknown to their conquerors so that the laws of the latter could not provide for them, nor how Roman law could be destroyed and afterwards reappear in Langobard Italy, without any account of its disappearance and reappearance in documents or chronicles. He concludes that although not officially recognized, it was allowed to live under the form of custom, in many of the private relations that existed among the conquered Italians. This view is confirmed by the 204th law of Rothari which, speaking of "any free woman living according to the law of the Langobards,'' would indicate that there were others not living according to that law. Moreover it was declared (Hodgkin, VI, 231) that foreigners who came to settle in the land ought to live according to the laws of the Langobards unless they obtained from the king the right to live according to some other law. Villari also sees (p. 312) evidences of the persistency of Roman law in the subsequent legislation of Liutprand providing that if a Langobard, after having children, should become a churchman, they should continue to live subject to the law under which he had lived before becoming a churchman. This would indicate that after becoming a churchman, the father lived under another law, which must have been the Roman law. Villari (p. 329) also sees elsewhere in Liutprand's legislation evidences of canonical law.
[7] Rothari says the seventy-sixth year (Edicti Codices M. G. LL., IV, p. I.) As to this, see note to I, 21, note 3, pp. 39, 40, supra; as to the so-called prologue, see Appendix, II, A. I.
[8] His intercourse with the Romans, as in the case of Adaloald, seems to have led to insanity. Was this the Langobard idea of the effect of contact with Roman luxury and civilization upon the princes of their race?


Chapter XLIII.

Therefore when duke Arichis, the father of him of whom we have spoken, was now ripe in years and nearing his last day, knowing that his son Aio was not of right mind, he commended Radoald and Grimoald [1] now in the flower of their youth, as if they were his own sons, to the Langobards who were present, and said to them that these two could rule them better than could Aio his son.

[1] I follow here and in other places the spelling of Waitz's text which is not uniform.


Chapter XLIV.

Then on the death of Arichis, who had held the dukedom fifty years, Aio, his son, was made leader of the Samnites, [1] and still Radoald and Grimoald [2] obeyed him in all things as their elder brother and lord. When this Aio had already governed the dukedom of Beneventum a year and five months, the Slavs came with a great number of ships and set up their camp not far from the city of Sipontum (Siponto). They made hidden pit-falls around their camp and when Aio came upon them in the absence of Raduald and Grimoald and attempted to conquer them, his horse fell into one of these pit-falls, the Slavs rushed upon him and he was killed with a number of others. When this was announced to Raduald he came quickly and talked familiarly with these Slavs in their own language, [3] and when in this way he had lulled them into greater indolence for war, he presently fell upon them, overthrew them with great slaughter, revenged the death of Aio and compelled those of his enemies who had survived to seek flight from these territories. [4]

[1] That is the Beneventines. This occurred A. D. 641 (Waitz).
[2] I follow here and in other places the spelling of Waitz's text which is not uniform.
[3] Raduald and Grimoald had been neighbors to the Slavs in the dukedom of Fruili from which they had come to Beneventum (Waitz).
[4] A.D. 642 (Hartmann, II, 1, 244).