The Lombards Convert

There was a period in the history of the Kingdom of Lombardy when they had no king. Two kings in a row had been murdered—the first by his wife, the second by a young slave he had mistreated—and a decade followed of rule by the dukes. This was in the 570s.

Paul the Deacon had nothing good to say about this era:

After his death the Langobards had no king for ten years but were under dukes, and each one of the dukes held possession of his own city, .... In these days many of the noble Romans were killed from love of gain, and the remainder were divided among their "guests" and made tributaries, that they should pay the third part of their products to the Langobards. By these dukes of the Langobards in the seventh year from the coming of Alboin and of his whole people, the churches were despoiled, the priests killed, the cities overthrown, the people who had grown up like crops annihilated, and besides those regions which Alboin had taken, the greater part of Italy was seized and subjugated by the Langobards.

With the threat of a Frankish invasion (by the successors of Clothair II), in 584 they chose to lead them Duke Authari (see illustration), the son of the last king. This is not about his fight with the Franks, however; it is about the woman he married and the result.

Authari married Theodelinda (c. 570 – 628 CE), the daughter of Duke Garibald I of Bavaria and Waldrada. This marriage brought a Bavarian Catholic into the (heretical) Arianism of the Lombards. They married in 588, but Authari died in 590. By that time, however, Theodelinda was so respected that she was asked to help choose the next king.

The next king was Agilulf, the Duke of Turin. Not only did she help choose him, she married him! At Theodelinda's request, Agilulf was baptized a Roman Catholic in 603, as well as their son. The king and queen built the Cathedral of Monza (which still exists). Under the two of them, the nation started abandoning Arianism and adopting Roman Catholicism.

For her efforts in this regard, Theodelinda was sent a nail from the Crucifixion. This was made into the Iron Crown of Lombardy, which replaced the crown used by the kings. and is now stored at the Cathedral of Monza. Agilulf made a truce with the papacy, allowing the Duchy of Rome to exist without threat from the Lombards (who were all around it).

As for the threat from the Franks, that ended for a time due to their internal civil battles. Let's take a look at how the Franks fell to internal fighting and stopped being a threat to others for a time.