Chapter D: Modern Logic (5)

In 1399 the Lancastrian Henry IV. overthrew the Plantagenet Richard II., and one of the most active partisans of the new monarch was Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and the most determined opponent of Lollardy. Richard II. had aided the clergy to suppress Lollardy without much success. The new dynasty supported the church in a similar way and not more successfully. The strength of the anti-clerical party lay in the House of Commons, in which the representatives of the shires took the leading part. Twice the Commons petitioned the crown to seize the temporalities of the church and apply them to such national purposes as relief of taxation, maintenance of the poor and the support of new lords and knights. Their anti-clerical policy was not continuous, however. The court party and the clergy proposed statutes for the suppression of heresy, and twice at least secured the concurrence of the Commons. One of these was the well-known statute _De heretico comburendo_ passed in 1401.

In the earlier stages of Lollardy, when the court and the clergy managed to bring Lollards before ecclesiastical tribunals backed by the civil power, the accused generally recanted and showed no disposition to endure martyrdom for their opinions. They became bolder in the beginning of the 15th century, William Sawtrey (Chartris), caught and condemned, refused to recant and was burnt at St Paul's Cross (March 1401), and other martyrdoms followed. The victims usually belonged to the lower classes. In 1410 John Badby, an artisan, was sent to the stake. His execution was memorable from the part taken in it by the prince of Wales, who himself tried to reason the Lollard out of his convictions. But nothing said would make Badby confess that "Christ sitting at supper did give to His disciples His living body to eat." The Lollards, far from daunted, abated no effort to make good their ground, and united a struggle for social and political liberty to the hatred felt by the peasants towards the Romish clergy. Jak Upland (John Countryman) took the place of Piers Ploughman, and upbraided the clergy, and especially the friars, for their wealth and luxury. Wycliffe had published the rule of St Francis, and had pointed out in a commentary upon the rule how far friars had departed from the maxims of their founder, and had persecuted the _Spirituales_ (the Fratricelli, Beghards, Lollards of the Netherlands) for keeping them to the letter (cf. Matthews, _English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted_, Early Eng. Text Soc., vol. lxxiv., 1880). Jak Upland put all this into rude nervous English verse:

"Freer, what charitie is this
To fain that whoso liveth after your order
Liveth most perfectlie,
And next followeth the state of the Apostles
In povertie and pennance:
And yet the wisest and greatest clerkes of you
Wend or send or procure to the court of Rome,
... and to be assoiled of the vow of povertie."

The archbishop, having the power of the throne behind him, attacked that stronghold of Lollardy the university of Oxford. In 1406 a document appeared purporting to be the testimony of the university in favour of Wycliffe; its genuineness was disputed at the time, and when quoted by Huss at the council of Constance it was repudiated by the English delegates. The archbishop treated Oxford as if it had issued the document, and procured the issue of severe regulations in order to purge the university of heresy. In 1408 Arundel in convocation proposed and carried the famous _Constitutiones Thomae Arundel_ intended to put down Wycliffite preachers and teaching. They provided amongst other things that no one was to be allowed to preach without a bishop's licence, that preachers preaching to the laity were not to rebuke the sins of the clergy, and that Lollard books and the translation of the Bible were to be searched for and destroyed.

When Henry V. became king a more determined effort was made to crush Lollardy. Hitherto its strength had lain among the country gentlemen who were the representatives of the shires. The court and clergy had been afraid to attack this powerful class. The new king determined to overawe them, and to this end selected one who had been a personal friend and whose life had been blameless. This was Sir John Oldcastle, in right of his wife, Lord Cobham, "the good Lord Cobham" as the common people called him. Henry first tried personal persuasion, and when that failed directed trial for heresy. Oldcastle was convicted, but was imprisoned for forty days in the Tower in hope that he might recant. He escaped, and summoned his co-religionists to his aid. A Lollard plot was formed to seize the king's person. In the end Oldcastle was burnt for an obstinate heretic (Dec. 1417). These persecutions were not greatly protested against; the wars of Henry V. with France had awakened the martial spirit of the nation, and little sympathy was felt for men who had declared that all war was but the murder and plundering of poor people for the sake of kings. Mocking ballads were composed upon the martyr Oldcastle, and this dislike to warfare was one of the chief accusations made against him (comp. Wright's _Political Poems_, ii. 244). But Arundel could not prevent the writing and distribution of Lollard books and pamphlets. Two appeared about the time of the martyrdom of Oldcastle--_The Ploughman's Prayer_ and the _Lanthorne of Light_. _The Ploughman's Prayer_ declared that true worship consists in three things--in loving God, and dreading God and trusting in God above all other things; and it showed how Lollards, pressed by persecution, became further separated from the religious life of the church. "Men maketh now great stonen houses full of glasen windows, and clepeth thilke thine houses and churches. And they setten in these houses mawmets of stocks and stones, to fore them they knelen privilich and apert and maken their prayers, and all this they say is they worship.... For Lorde our belief is that thine house is man's soul." Notwithstanding the repression, Lollardy fastened in new parts of England, and Lollards abounded in Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Lincoln and Buckinghamshire.

The council of Constance (1414-1418) put an end to the papal schism, and also showed its determination to put down heresy by burning John Huss. When news of this reached England the clergy were incited to still more vigorous proceedings against Lollard preachers and books. From this time Lollardy appears banished from the fields and streets, and takes refuge in houses and places of concealment. There was no more wayside preaching, but instead there were _conventicula occulta_ in houses, in peasants' huts, in sawpits and in field ditches, where the Bible was read and exhortations were given, and so Lollardy continued. In 1428 Archbishop Chichele confessed that the Lollards seemed as numerous as ever, and that their literary and preaching work went on as vigorously as before. It was found also that many of the poorer rectors and parish priests, and a great many chaplains and curates, were in secret association with the Lollards, so much so that in many places processions were never made and worship on saints' days was abandoned. For the Lollards were hardened by persecution, and became fanatical in the statement of their doctrines. Thomas Bagley was accused of declaring that if in the sacrament a priest made bread into God, he made a God that can be eaten by rats and mice; that the pharisees of the day, the monks, and the nuns, and the friars and all other privileged persons recognized by the church were limbs of Satan; and that auricular confession to the priest was the will not of God but of the devil. And others held that any priest who took salary was excommunicate; and that boys could bless the bread as well as priests.

From England Lollardy passed into Scotland. Oxford infected St Andrews, and we find traces of more than one vigorous search made for Lollards among the teaching staff of the Scottish university, while the Lollards of Kyle in Ayrshire were claimed by Knox as the forerunners of the Scotch Reformation.

The opinions of the later Lollards can best be gathered from the
learned and unfortunate Pecock, who wrote his elaborate _Repressor_
against the "Bible-men," as he calls them. He summed up their
doctrines under eleven heads: they condemn the having and using images
in the churches, the going on pilgrimages to the memorial or "mynde
places" of the saints, the holding of landed possessions by the
clergy, the various ranks of the hierarchy, the framing of
ecclesiastical laws and ordinances by papal and episcopal authority,
the institution of religious orders, the costliness of ecclesiastical
decorations, the ceremonies of the mass and the sacraments, the taking
of oaths and the maintaining that war and capital punishment are
lawful. When these points are compared with the Lollard Conclusions of
1395, it is plain that Lollardy had not greatly altered its opinions
after fifty-five years of persecution. All the articles of Pecock's
list, save that on capital punishment, are to be found in the
Conclusions; and, although many writers have held that Wycliffe's own
views differed greatly from what have been called the "exaggerations
of the later and more violent Lollards," all these views may be traced
to Wycliffe himself. Pecock's idea was that all the statements which
he was prepared to impugn came from three false opinions or
"trowings," viz. that no governance or ordinance is to be esteemed a
law of God which is not founded on Scripture, that every humble-minded
Christian man or woman is able without "fail and defaut" to find out
the true sense of Scripture, and that having done so he ought to
listen to no arguments to the contrary; he elsewhere adds a fourth (i.
102), that if a man be not only meek but also keep God's law he shall
have a true understanding of Scripture, even though "no man ellis
teche him saue God." These statements, especially the last, show us
the connexion between the Lollards and those mystics of the 14th
century, such as Tauler and Ruysbroeck, who accepted the teachings of
Nicholas of Basel, and formed themselves into the association of the
Friends of God.

The persecutions were continued down to the reign of Henry VIII., and when the writings of Luther began to appear in England the clergy were not so much afraid of Lutheranism as of the increased life they gave to men who for generations had been reading Wycliffe's _Wickette_. "It is," wrote Bishop Tunstall to Erasmus in 1523, "no question of pernicious novelty, it is only that new arms are being added to the great band of Wycliffite heretics." Lollardy, which continued down to the Reformation, did much to shape the movement in England. The subordination of clerical to laic jurisdiction, the reduction in ecclesiastical possessions, the insisting on a translation of the Bible which could be read by the "common" man were all inheritances bequeathed by the Lollards.

LITERATURE.--_Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif cum
Tritico_, edited for the Rolls Series by W. W. Shirley (London, 1858);
the _Chronicon Angliae, auctore monacho quodam Sancti Albani_, ed. by
Sir E. Maunde Thompson (London, 1874); _Historia Anglicana_ of Thomas
Walsingham, ed. by H. T. Riley, vol. iii. (London. 1869); _Chronicon_
of Henry Knighton, ed. by J. R. Lumby (London, 1895); R. L. Poole,
_Wycliffe and Movements for Reform_ (London, 1889); R. Pecock,
_Repressor of overmuch Blaming of the Clergy_ (2 vols., London, 1860);
F. D. Matthew, _The English Works of John Wyclif_ (Early English Text
Society, London, 1880); T. Wright, _Political Poems and Songs_ (2
vols., London, 1859); G. V. Lechler, _Johann von Wiclif_, ii. (1873);
J. Loserth, _Hus und Wycliffe_ (Prague, 1884, English translation by
J. Evans, London, 1884); D. Wilkins, _Concilia Magnae Britanniae et
Hiberniae_, iii. (London, 1773); E. Powell and G. M. Trevelyan, _The
Peasants' Rising and the Lollards, a Collection of Unpublished
Documents_ (London, 1899); G. M. Trevelyan, _England in the Age of
Wycliffe_ (London, 1898, 3rd ed., 1904); the publications of the
Wiclif Society; H. S. Cronin, "The Twelve Conclusions of the
Lollards," in the _English Historical Review_ (April 1907, pp. 292
ff.); and J. Gairdner, _Lollardy and the Reformation in England_
(1908). (T. M. L.)

LOLLIUS, MARCUS, Roman general, the first governor of Galatia (25 B.C.), consul in 21. In 16, when governor of Gaul, he was defeated by the Sigambri (Sygambri), Usipetes and Tencteri, German tribes who had crossed the Rhine. This defeat is coupled by Tacitus with the disaster of Varus, but it was disgraceful rather than dangerous. Lollius was subsequently (2 B.C.) attached in the capacity of tutor and adviser to Gaius Caesar (Augustus's grandson) on his mission to the East. He was accused of extortion and treachery to the state, and denounced by Gaius to the emperor. To avoid punishment he is said to have taken poison. According to Velleïus Paterculus and Pliny, he was a hypocrite and cared for nothing but amassing wealth. It was formerly thought that this was the Lollius whom Horace described as a model of integrity and superior to avarice in _Od._ iv. 9, but it seems hardly likely that this Ode, as well as the two Lollian epistles of Horace (i. 2 and 18), was addressed to him. All three must have been addressed to the same individual, a young man, probably the son of this Lollius.

See Suetonius, _Augustus_, 23, _Tiberius_, 12; Vell. Pat. ii. 97. 102;
Tacitus, _Annals_, i. 10, iii. 48; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ix. 35 (58);
Dio Cassius, liv. 6; see also J. C. Tarver, _Tiberius the Tyrant_
(1902), pp. 200 foll.

LOLOS, the name given by the Chinese to a large tribe of aborigines who inhabit the greater part of southern Szechuen. Their home is in the mountainous country called Taliang shan, which lies between the Yangtsze river on the east and the Kien ch'ang valley on the west, in south Szechuen, but they are found in scattered communities as far south as the Burmese frontier, and west to the Mekong. There seems no reason to doubt that they were, like the Miaotze, one of the aboriginal tribes of China, driven southwards by the advancing flood of Chinese. The name is said to be a Chinese corruption of Lulu, the name of a former chieftain of a tribe who called themselves Nersu. Their language, like the Chinese, is monosyllabic and probably ideographic, and the characters bear a certain resemblance to Chinese. No literature, however, worthy of the name is known to exist, and few can read and write. Politically they are divided into tribes, each under the government of a hereditary chieftain. The community consists of three classes, the "blackbones" or nobles, the "whitebones" or plebeians, and the _watze_ or slaves. The last are mostly Chinese captured in forays, or the descendants of such captives. Within Lolo-land proper, which covers some 11,000 sq. m., the Chinese government exercises no jurisdiction. The Lolos make frequent raids on their unarmed Chinese neighbours. They cultivate wheat, barley and millet, but little rice. They have some knowledge of metals, making their own tools and weapons. Women are said to be held in respect, and may become chiefs of the tribes. They do not intermarry with Chinese.

See A. F. Legendre, "Les Lolos. Étude ethnologique et
anthropologique," in _T'oung Pao II._, vol. x. (1909); E. C. Baber,
_Royal Geog. Society Sup. Papers_, vol. i. (London, 1882); F. S. A.
Bourne, _Blue Book, China, No. 1_ (1888); A. Hosie, _Three Years in
Western China_ (London, 1897).

LOMBARD LEAGUE, the name given in general to any league of the cities of Lombardy, but applied especially to the league founded in 1167, which brought about the defeat of the emperor Frederick I. at Legnano, and the consequent destruction of his plans for obtaining complete authority over Italy.

Lacking often the protection of a strong ruler, the Lombard cities had been accustomed to act together for mutual defence, and in 1093 Milan, Lodi, Piacenza and Cremona formed an alliance against the emperor Henry IV., in favour of his rebellious son Conrad. The early years of the reign of Frederick I. were largely spent in attacks on the privileges of the cities of Lombardy. This led to a coalition, formed in March 1167, between the cities of Cremona, Mantua, Bergamo and Brescia to confine Frederick to the rights which the emperors had enjoyed for the past hundred years. This league or _concordia_ was soon joined by other cities, among which were Milan, Parma, Padua, Verona, Piacenza and Bologna, and the allies began to build a fortress near the confluence of the Tanaro and the Bormida, which, in honour of Pope Alexander III., was called Alessandria. During the absence of Frederick from Italy from 1168 to 1174, the relations between the pope and the league became closer, and Alexander became the leader of the alliance. Meetings of the league were held in 1172 and 1173 to strengthen the bond, and to concert measures against the emperor, the penalties of the church being invoked to prevent defection. The decisive struggle began when Frederick attacked Alessandria in 1174. The fortress was bravely defended, and the siege was raised on the approach of succour from the allied cities. Negotiations for peace failed, and the emperor, having marched against Milan, suffered a severe defeat at Legnano on the 29th of May 1176. Subsequently Pope Alexander was detached from his allies, and made peace with Frederick, after which a truce for six years was arranged between the emperor and the league. Further negotiations ripened into the peace of Constance signed on the 25th of June 1183, which granted almost all the demands of the cities, and left only a shadowy authority to the emperor (see ITALY).

In 1226, when the emperor Frederick II. avowed his intention of restoring the imperial authority in Italy, the league was renewed, and at once fifteen cities, including Milan and Verona, were placed under the ban. Frederick, however, was not in a position to fight, and the mediation of Pope Honorius III. was successful in restoring peace. In 1231 the hostile intentions of the emperor once more stirred the cities into activity. They held a meeting at Bologna and raised an army, but as in 1226, the matter ended in mutual fulminations and defiances. A more serious conflict arose in 1234. The great question at issue, the nature and extent of the imperial authority over the Lombard cities, was still unsettled when Frederick's rebellious son, the German king Henry VII., allied himself with them. Having crushed his son and rejected the proffered mediation of Pope Gregory IX., the emperor declared war on the Lombards in 1236; he inflicted a serious defeat upon their forces at Cortenuova in November 1237 and met with other successes, but in 1238 he was beaten back from before Brescia. In 1239 Pope Gregory joined the cities and the struggle widened out into the larger one of the Empire and the Papacy. This was still proceeding when Frederick died in December 1250 and it was only ended by the overthrow of the Hohenstaufen and the complete destruction of the imperial authority in Italy.

For a full account of the Lombard League see C. Vignati, _Storia
diplomata della Lega Lombarda_ (Milan, 1866); H. Prutz, _Kaiser
Friedrich I._, Band ii. (Danzig, 1871-1874); W. von Giesebrecht,
_Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit_, Band v. (Leipzig, 1888); and J.
Ficker, _Zur Geschichte des Lombardenbundes_ (Vienna, 1868).

LOMBARDO, the name of a family of Venetian sculptors and architects; their surname was apparently Solaro, and the name of Lombardo was given to the earliest known, Martino, who emigrated from Lombardy to Venice in the middle of the 15th century and became celebrated as an architect. He had two sons, Moro and Pietro, of whom the latter (_c._ 1435-1515) was one of the greatest sculptors and architects of his time, while his sons Antonio (d. 1516) and Tullio (d. 1559) were hardly less celebrated. Pietro's work as an architect is seen in numerous churches, the Vendramini-Calargi palace (1481), the doge's palace (1498), the façade (1485) of the _scuola_ of St Mark and the cathedral of Cividale del Friuli (1502); but he is now more famous as a sculptor, often in collaboration with his sons; he executed the tomb of the doge Mocenigo (1478) in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo at Venice, and a bas-relief for the tomb of Dante at Ravenna, and in 1483 began the beautiful decorations in the church of Sta Maria de' Miracoli at Venice, which is associated with his workshop (see also VENICE for numerous references to the work of the Lombardi). Antonio's masterpiece is the marble relief of St Anthony making a new-born child speak in defence of its mother's honour, in the Santo at Padua (1505). Tullio's best-known works are the four kneeling angels (1484) in the church of San Martino, Venice, a coronation of the Virgin in San Giovanni Crisostomo and two bas-reliefs in the Santo, Padua, besides two others formerly in the Spitzer collection, representing Vulcan's Forge and Minerva disputing with Neptune.

LOMBARDS, or LANGOBARDI, a Suevic people who appear to have inhabited the lower basin of the Elbe and whose name is believed to survive in the modern Bardengau to the south of Hamburg. They are first mentioned in connexion with the year A.D. 5, at which time they were defeated by the Romans under Tiberius, afterwards emperor. In A.D. 9, however, after the destruction of Varus's army, the Romans gave up their attempt to extend their frontier to the Elbe. At first, with most of the Suevic tribes, they were subject to the hegemony of Maroboduus, king of the Marcomanni, but they revolted from him in his war with Arminius, chief of the Cherusci, in the year 17. We again hear of their interference in the dynastic strife of the Cherusci some time after the year 47. From this time they are not mentioned until the year 165, when a force of Langobardi, in alliance with the Marcomanni, was defeated by the Romans, apparently on the Danubian frontier. It has been inferred from this incident that the Langobardi had already moved southwards, but the force mentioned may very well have been sent from the old home of the tribe, as the various Suevic peoples seem generally to have preserved some form of political union. From this time onwards we hear no more of them until the end of the 5th century.

In their own traditions we are told that the Langobardi were originally called Winnili and dwelt in an island named Scadinavia (with this story compare that of the Gothic migration, see GOTHS). Thence they set out under the leadership of Ibor and Aio, the sons of a prophetess called Gambara, and came into conflict with the Vandals. The leaders of the latter prayed to Wodan for victory, while Gambara and her sons invoked Frea. Wodan promised to give victory to those whom he should see in front of him at sunrise. Frea directed the Winnili to bring their women with their hair let down round their faces like beards and turned Wodan's couch round so that he faced them. When Wodan awoke at sunrise he saw the host of the Winnili and said, "_Qui sunt isti Longibarbi?_"--"Who are these long-beards?"--and Frea replied, "As thou hast given them the name, give them also the victory." They conquered in the battle and were thenceforth known as Langobardi. After this they are said to have wandered through regions which cannot now be identified, apparently between the Elbe and the Oder, under legendary kings, the first of whom was Agilmund, the son of Aio.

Shortly before the end of the 5th century the Langobardi appear to have taken possession of the territories formerly occupied by the Rugii whom Odoacer had overthrown in 487, a region which probably included the present province of Lower Austria. At this time they were subject to Rodulf, king of the Heruli, who, however, took up arms against them; according to one story, owing to the treacherous murder of Rodulf's brother, according to another through an irresistible desire for fighting on the part of his men. The result was the total defeat of the Heruli by the Langobardi under their king Tato and the death of Rodulf at some date between 493 and 508. By this time the Langobardi are said to have adopted Christianity in its Arian form. Tato was subsequently killed by his nephew Waccho. The latter reigned for thirty years, though frequent attempts were made by Ildichis, a son or grandson of Tato, to recover the throne. Waccho is said to have conquered the Suabi, possibly the Bavarians, and he was also involved in strife with the Gepidae, with whom Ildichis had taken refuge. He was succeeded by his youthful son Walthari, who reigned only seven years under the guardianship of a certain Audoin. On Walthari's death (about 546?) Audoin succeeded. He also was involved in hostilities with the Gepidae, whose support of Ildichis he repaid by protecting Ustrogotthus, a rival of their king Thorisind. In these quarrels both nations aimed at obtaining the support of the emperor Justinian, who, in pursuance of his policy of playing off one against the other, invited the Langobardi into Noricum and Pannonia, where they now settled.

A large force of Lombards under Audoin fought on the imperial side at the battle of the Apennines against the Ostrogothic king Totila in 553, but the assistance of Justinian, though often promised, had no effect on the relations of the two nations, which were settled for the moment after a series of truces by the victory of the Langobardi, probably in 554. The resulting peace was sealed by the murder of Ildichis and Ustrogotthus, and the Langobardi seem to have continued inactive until the death of Audoin, perhaps in 565, and the accession of his son Alboin, who had won a great reputation in the wars with the Gepidae. It was about this time that the Avars, under their first Chagun Baian, entered Europe, and with them, Alboin is said to have made an alliance against the Gepidae under their new king Cunimund. The Avars, however, did not take part in the final battle, in which the Langobardi were completely victorious. Alboin, who had slain Cunimund in the battle, now took Rosamund, daughter of the dead king, to be his wife.

In 568 Alboin and the Langobardi, in accordance with a compact made with Baian, which is recorded by Menander, abandoned their old homes to the Avars and passed southwards into Italy, were they were destined to found a new and mighty kingdom. (F. G. M. B.)

_The Lombard Kingdom in Italy._--In 568 Alboin, king of the Langobards, with the women and children of the tribe and all their possessions, with Saxon allies, with the subject tribe of the Gepidae and a mixed host of other barbarians, descended into Italy by the great plain at the head of the Adriatic. The war which had ended in the downfall of the Goths had exhausted Italy; it was followed by famine and pestilence; and the government at Constantinople made but faint efforts to retain the province which Belisarius and Narses had recovered for it. Except in a few fortified places, such as Ticinum or Pavia, the Italians did not venture to encounter the new invaders; and, though Alboin was not without generosity, the Lombards, wherever resisted, justified the opinion of their ferocity by the savage cruelty of the invasion. In 572, according to the Lombard chronicler, Alboin fell a victim to the revenge of his wife Rosamund, the daughter of the king of the Gepidae, whose skull Alboin had turned into a drinking cup, out of which he forced Rosamund to drink. By this time the Langobards had established themselves in the north of Italy. Chiefs were placed, or placed themselves, first in the border cities, like Friuli and Trent, which commanded the north-eastern passes, and then in other principal places; and this arrangement became characteristic of the Lombard settlement. The principal seat of the settlement was the rich plain watered by the Po and its affluents, which was in future to receive its name from them; but their power extended across the Apennines into Liguria and Tuscany, and then southwards to the outlying dukedoms of Spoleto and Benevento. The invaders failed to secure any maritime ports or any territory that was conveniently commanded from the sea. Ticinum (Pavia), the one place which had obstinately resisted Alboin, became the seat of their kings.

After the short and cruel reign of Cleph, the successor of Alboin, the Lombards (as we may begin for convenience sake to call them) tried for ten years the experiment of a national confederacy of their dukes (as, after the Latin writers, their chiefs are styled), without any king. It was the rule of some thirty-five or thirty-six petty tyrants, under whose oppression and private wars even the invaders suffered. With anarchy among themselves and so precarious a hold on the country, hated by the Italian population and by the Catholic clergy, threatened also by an alliance of the Greek empire with their persistent rivals the Franks beyond the Alps, they resolved to sacrifice their independence and elect a king. In 584 they chose Authari, the grandson of Alboin, and endowed the royal domain with a half of their possessions. From this time till the fall of the Lombard power before the arms of their rivals the Franks under Charles the Great, the kingly rule continued. Authari, "the Long-haired," with his Roman title of Flavius, marks the change from the war king of an invading host to the permanent representative of the unity and law of the nation, and the increased power of the crown, by the possession of a great domain, to enforce its will. The independence of the dukes was surrendered to the king. The dukedoms in the neighbourhood of the seat of power were gradually absorbed, and their holders transformed into royal officers. Those of the northern marches, Trent and Friuli, with the important dukedom of Turin, retained longer the kind of independence which marchlands usually give where invasion is to be feared. The great dukedom of Benevento in the south, with its neighbour Spoleto, threatened at one time to be a separate principality, and even to the last resisted, with varying success, the full claims of the royal authority at Pavia.

The kingdom of the Lombards lasted more than two hundred years, from Alboin (568) to the fall of Desiderius (774)--much longer than the preceding Teutonic kingdom of Theodoric and the Goths. But it differed from the other Teutonic conquests in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain. It was never complete in point of territory: there were always two, and almost to the last three, capitals--the Lombard one, Pavia; the Latin one, Rome; the Greek one, Ravenna; and the Lombards never could get access to the sea. And it never was complete over the subject race: it profoundly affected the Italians of the north; in its turn it was entirely transformed by contact with them; but the Lombards never amalgamated with the Italians till their power as a ruling race was crushed by the victory given to the Roman element by the restored empire of the Franks. The Langobards, German in their faults and in their strength, but coarser, at least at first, than the Germans whom the Italians had known, the Goths of Theodoric and Totila, found themselves continually in the presence of a subject population very different from anything which the other Teutonic conquerors met with among the provincials--like them, exhausted, dispirited, unwarlike, but with the remains and memory of a great civilization round them, intelligent, subtle, sensitive, feeling themselves infinitely superior in experience and knowledge to the rough barbarians whom they could not fight, and capable of hatred such as only cultivated races can nourish. The Lombards who, after they had occupied the lands and cities of Upper Italy, still went on sending forth furious bands to plunder and destroy where they did not care to stay, never were able to overcome the mingled fear and scorn and loathing of the Italians. They adapted themselves very quickly indeed to many Italian fashions. Within thirty years of the invasions, Authari took the imperial title of Flavius, even while his bands were leading Italian captives in leash like dogs under the walls of Rome, and under the eyes of Pope Gregory; and it was retained by his successors. They soon became Catholics; and then in all the usages of religion, in church building, in founding monasteries, in their veneration for relics, they vied with Italians. Authari's queen, Theodelinda, solemnly placed the Lombard nation under the patronage of St John the Baptist, and at Monza she built in his honour the first Lombard church, and the royal palace near it. King Liutprand (712-744) bought the relics of St Augustine for a large sum to be placed in his church at Pavia. Their Teutonic speech disappeared; except in names and a few technical words all traces of it are lost. But to the last they had the unpardonable crime of being a ruling barbarian race or caste in Italy. To the end they are "nefandissimi," execrable, loathsome, filthy. So wrote Gregory the Great when they first appeared. So wrote Pope Stephen IV., at the end of their rule, when stirring up the kings of the Franks to destroy them.

Authari's short reign (584-591) was one of renewed effort for conquest. It brought the Langobards face to face, not merely with the emperors at Constantinople, but with the first of the great statesmen popes, Gregory the Great (590-604). But Lombard conquest was bungling and wasteful; when they had spoiled a city they proceeded to tear down its walls and raze it to the ground. Authari's chief connexion with the fortunes of his people was an important, though an accidental one. The Lombard chronicler tells a romantic tale of the way in which Authari sought his bride from Garibald, duke of the Bavarians, how he went incognito in the embassy to judge of her attractions, and how she recognized her disguised suitor. The bride was the Christian Theodelinda, and she became to the Langobards what Bertha was to the Anglo-Saxons and Clotilda to the Franks. She became the mediator between the Lombards and the Catholic Church. Authari, who had brought her to Italy, died shortly after his marriage. But Theodelinda had so won on the Lombard chiefs that they bid her as queen choose the one among them whom she would have for her husband and for king. She chose Agilulf, duke of Turin (592-615). He was not a true Langobard, but a Thuringian. It was the beginning of peace between the Lombards and the Catholic clergy. Agilulf could not abandon his traditional Arianism, and he was a very uneasy neighbour, not only to the Greek exarch, but to Rome itself. But he was favourably disposed both to peace and to the Catholic Church. Gregory interfered to prevent a national conspiracy against the Langobards, like that of St Brice's day in England against the Danes, or that later uprising against the French, the Sicilian Vespers. He was right both in point of humanity and of policy. The Arian and Catholic bishops went on for a time side by side; but the Lombard kings and clergy rapidly yielded to the religious influences around them, even while the national antipathies continued unabated and vehement. Gregory, who despaired of any serious effort on the part of the Greek emperors to expel the Lombards, endeavoured to promote peace between the Italians and Agilulf; and, in spite of the feeble hostility of the exarchs of Ravenna, the pope and the king of the Lombards became the two real powers in the north and centre of Italy. Agilulf was followed, after two unimportant reigns, by his son-in-law, the husband of Theodelinda's daughter, King Rothari (636-652), the Lombard legislator, still an Arian though he favoured the Catholics. He was the first of their kings who collected their customs under the name of laws--and he did this, not in their own Teutonic dialect, but in Latin. The use of Latin implies that the laws were to be not merely the personal law of the Lombards, but the law of the land, binding on Lombards and Romans alike. But such rude legislation could not provide for all questions arising even in the decayed state of Roman civilization. It is probable that among themselves the Italians kept to their old usages and legal precedents where they were not overridden by the conquerors' law, and by degrees a good many of the Roman civil arrangements made their way into the Lombard code, while all ecclesiastical ones, and they were a large class, were untouched by it.

There must have been much change of property; but appearances are
conflicting as to the terms on which land generally was held by the
old possessors or the new comers, and as to the relative legal
position of the two. Savigny held that, making allowance for the
anomalies and usurpations of conquest, the Roman population held the
bulk of the land as they had held it before, and were governed by an
uninterrupted and acknowledged exercise of Roman law in their old
municipal organization. Later inquirers, including Leo, Troya and
Hegel, have found that the supposition does not tally with a whole
series of facts, which point to a Lombard territorial law ignoring
completely any parallel Roman and personal law, to a great restriction
of full civil rights among the Romans, analogous to the condition of
the rayah under the Turks, and to a reduction of the Roman occupiers
to a class of half-free "aldii," holding immovable tenancies under
lords of superior race and privilege, and subject to the sacrifice
either of the third part of their holdings or the third part of the
produce. The Roman losses, both of property and rights, were likely to
be great at first; how far they continued permanent during the two
centuries of the Lombard kingdom, or how far the legal distinctions
between Rome and Lombard gradually passed into desuetude, is a further
question. The legislation of the Lombard kings, in form a territorial
and not a personal law, shows no signs of a disposition either to
depress or to favour the Romans, but only the purpose to maintain, in
a rough fashion, strict order and discipline impartially among all
their subjects.

From Rothari (d. 652) to Liutprand (712-744) the Lombard kings, succeeding one another in the irregular fashion of the time, sometimes by descent, sometimes by election, sometimes by conspiracy and violence, strove fitfully to enlarge their boundaries, and contended with the aristocracy of dukes inherent in the original organization of the nation, an element which, though much weakened, always embarrassed the power of the crown, and checked the unity of the nation. Their old enemies the Franks on the west, and the Slavs or Huns, ever ready to break in on the north-east, and sometimes called in by mutinous and traitorous dukes of Friuli and Trent, were constant and serious dangers. By the popes, who represented Italian interests, they were always looked upon with dislike and jealousy, even when they had become zealous Catholics, the founders of churches and monasteries; with the Greek empire there was chronic war. From time to time they made raids into the unsubdued parts of Italy, and added a city or two to their dominions. But there was no sustained effort for the complete subjugation of Italy till Liutprand, the most powerful of the line. He tried it, and failed. He broke up the independence of the great southern duchies, Benevento and Spoleto. For a time, in the heat of the dispute about images, he won the pope to his side against the Greeks. For a time, but only for a time, he deprived the Greeks of Ravenna. Aistulf, his successor, carried on the same policy. He even threatened Rome itself, and claimed a capitation tax. But the popes, thoroughly irritated and alarmed, and hopeless of aid from the East, turned to the family which was rising into power among the Franks of the West, the mayors of the palace of Austrasia. Pope Gregory III. applied in vain to Charles Martel. But with his successors Pippin and Charles the popes were more successful. In return for the transfer by the pope of the Frank crown from the decayed line of Clovis to his own, Pippin crossed the Alps, defeated Aistulf and gave to the pope the lands which Aistulf had torn from the empire, Ravenna and the Pentapolis (754-756). But the angry quarrels still went on between the popes and the Lombards. The Lombards were still to the Italians a "foul and horrid" race. At length, invited by Pope Adrian I., Pippin's son Charlemagne once more descended into Italy. As the Lombard kingdom began, so it ended, with a siege of Pavia. Desiderius, the last king, became a prisoner (774), and the Lombard power perished. Charlemagne, with the title of king of the Franks and Lombards, became master of Italy, and in 800 the pope, who had crowned Pippin king of the Franks, claimed to bestow the Roman empire, and crowned his greater son emperor of the Romans (800).

_Effects of the Carolingian Conquest._--To Italy the overthrow of the Lombard kings was the loss of its last chance of independence and unity. To the Lombards the conquest was the destruction of their legal and social supremacy. Henceforth they were equally with the Italians the subjects of the Frank kings. The Carolingian kings expressly recognized the Roman law, and allowed all who would be counted Romans to "profess" it. But Latin influences were not strong enough to extinguish the Lombard name and destroy altogether the recollections and habits of the Lombard rule; Lombard law was still recognized, and survived in the schools of Pavia. Lombardy remained the name of the finest province of Italy, and for a time was the name for Italy itself. But what was specially Lombard could not stand in the long run against the Italian atmosphere which surrounded it. Generation after generation passed more and more into real Italians. Antipathies, indeed, survived, and men even in the 10th century called each other Roman or Langobard as terms of reproach. But the altered name of Lombard also denoted henceforth some of the proudest of Italians; and, though the Lombard speech had utterly perished their most common names still kept up the remembrance that their fathers had come from beyond the Alps.

But the establishment of the Frank kingdom, and still more the re-establishment of the Christian empire as the source of law and jurisdiction in Christendom, had momentous influence on the history of the Italianized Lombards. The Empire was the counterweight to the local tyrannies into which the local authorities established by the Empire itself, the feudal powers, judicial and military, necessary for the purposes of government, invariably tended to degenerate. When they became intolerable, from the Empire were sought the exemptions, privileges, immunities from that local authority, which, anomalous and anarchical as they were in theory, yet in fact were the foundations of all the liberties of the middle ages in the Swiss cantons, in the free towns of Germany and the Low Countries, in the Lombard cities of Italy. Italy was and ever has been a land of cities; and, ever since the downfall of Rome and the decay of the municipal system, the bishops of the cities had really been at the head of the peaceful and industrial part of their population, and were a natural refuge for the oppressed, and sometimes for the mutinous and the evil doers, from the military and civil powers of the duke or count or judge, too often a rule of cruelty or fraud. Under the Carolingian empire, a vast system grew up in the North Italian cities of episcopal "immunities," by which a city with its surrounding district was removed, more or less completely, from the jurisdiction of the ordinary authority, military or civil, and placed under that of the bishop. These "immunities" led to the temporal sovereignty of the bishops; under it the spirit of liberty grew more readily than under the military chief. Municipal organization, never quite forgotten, naturally revived under new forms, and with its "consuls" at the head of the citizens, with its "arts" and "crafts" and "gilds," grew up secure under the shadow of the church. In due time the city populations, free from the feudal yoke, and safe within the walls which in many instances the bishops had built for them, became impatient also of the bishop's government. The cities which the bishops had made thus independent of the dukes and counts next sought to be free from the bishops; in due time they too gained their charters of privilege and liberty. Left to take care of themselves, islands in a sea of turbulence, they grew in the sense of self-reliance and independence; they grew also to be aggressive, quarrelsome and ambitious. Thus, by the 11th century, the Lombard cities had become "communes," commonalties, republics, managing their own affairs, and ready for attack or defence. Milan had recovered its greatness, ecclesiastically as well as politically; it scarcely bowed to Rome, and it aspired to the position of a sovereign city, mistress over its neighbours. At length, in the 12th century, the inevitable conflict came between the republicanism of the Lombard cities and the German feudalism which still claimed their allegiance in the name of the Empire. Leagues and counter-leagues were formed; and a confederacy of cities, with Milan at its head, challenged the strength of Germany under one of its sternest emperors, Frederick Barbarossa. At first Frederick was victorious; Milan, except its churches, was utterly destroyed; everything that marked municipal independence was abolished in the "rebel" cities; and they had to receive an imperial magistrate instead of their own (1158-1162). But the Lombard league was again formed. Milan was rebuilt, with the help even of its jealous rivals, and at Legnano (1176) Frederick was utterly defeated. The Lombard cities had regained their independence; and at the peace of Constance (1183) Frederick found himself compelled to confirm it.

From the peace of Constance the history of the Lombards is merely part
of the history of Italy. Their cities went through the ordinary
fortunes of most Italian cities. They quarrelled and fought with one
another. They took opposite sides in the great strife of the time
between pope and emperor, and were Guelf and Ghibelline by old
tradition, or as one or other faction prevailed in them. They swayed
backwards and forwards between the power of the people and the power
of the few; but democracy and oligarchy passed sooner or later into
the hands of a master who veiled his lordship under various titles,
and generally at last into the hands of a family. Then, in the larger
political struggles and changes of Europe, they were incorporated into
a kingdom, or principality or duchy, carved out to suit the interest
of a foreigner, or to make a heritage for the nephew of a pope. But in
two ways especially the energetic race which grew out of the fusion of
Langobards and Italians between the 9th and the 12th centuries has
left the memory of itself. In England, at least, the enterprising
traders and bankers who found their way to the West, from the 13th to
the 16th centuries, though they certainly did not all come from
Lombardy, bore the name of Lombards. In the next place, the Lombards
or the Italian builders whom they employed or followed, the "masters
of Como," of whom so much is said in the early Lombard laws,
introduced a manner of building, stately, solemn and elastic, to which
their name has been attached, and which gives a character of its own
to some of the most interesting churches in Italy. (R. W. C.)

LOMBARDY, a territorial division of Italy, bounded N. by the Alps, S. by Emilia, E. by Venetia and W. by Piedmont. It is divided into eight provinces, Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Mantua, Milan, Pavia and Sondrio, and has an area of 9386 sq. m. Milan, the chief city, is the greatest railway centre of Italy; it is in direct communication not only with the other principal towns of Lombardy and the rest of Italy but also with the larger towns of France, Germany and Switzerland, being the nearest great town to the tunnels of the St Gothard and the Simplon. The other railway centres of the territory are Mortara, Pavia and Mantua, while every considerable town is situated on or within easy reach of the railway, this being rendered comparatively easy owing to the relative flatness of the greater part of the country. The line from Milan to Porto Ceresio is worked in the main by electric motor driven trains, while on that from Lecco to Colico and Chiavenna over-head wires are adopted. The more remote districts and the immediate environs of the larger town are served by steam tramways and electric railways. The most important rivers are the Po, which follows, for the most part, the southern boundary of Lombardy, and the Ticino, one of the largest tributaries of the Po, which forms for a considerable distance the western boundary. The majority of the Italian lakes, those of Garda, Idro, Iseo, Como, Lugano, Varese and Maggiore, lie wholly or in part within it. The climate of Lombardy is thoroughly continental; in summer the heat is greater than in the south of Italy, while the winter is very cold, and bitter winds, snow and mist are frequent. In the summer rain is rare beyond the lower Alps, but a system of irrigation, unsurpassed in Europe, and dating from the middle ages, prevails, so that a failure of the crops is hardly possible. There are three zones of cultivation: in the mountains, pasturage; the lower slopes are devoted to the culture of the vine, fruit-trees (including chestnuts) and the silkworm; while in the regions of the plain, large crops of maize, rice, wheat, flax, hemp and wine are produced, and thousands of mulberry-trees are grown for the benefit of the silkworms, the culture of which in the province of Milan has entirely superseded the sheep-breeding for which it was famous during the middle ages. Milan is indeed the principal silk market in the world. In 1905 there were 490 mills reeling silk in Lombardy, with 35,407 workers, and 276 throwing-mills with 586,000 spindles. The chief centre of silk weaving is Como, but the silk is commercially dealt with at Milan, and there is much exportation. A considerable amount of cotton is manufactured, but most of the raw cotton (600,000 bales) is imported, the cultivation being insignificant in Italy. There are 400 mills in Lombardy, 277 of which are in the province of Milan. The largest linen and woollen mills in Italy are situated at Fara d'Adda. Milan also manufactures motor-cars, though Turin is the principal centre in Italy for this industry. There are copper, zinc and iron mines, and numerous quarries of marble, alabaster and granite. In addition to the above industries the chief manufactures are hats, rope and paper-making, iron-casting, gun-making, printing and lithography. Lombardy is indeed the most industrial district of Italy. In parts the peasants suffer much from _pellagra_.

The most important towns with their communal population in the respective provinces, according to the census of 1901, are Bergamo (46,861), Treviglio (14,897), total of province 467,549, number of communes 306; Brescia (69,210), Chiari (10,749), total of province 541,765, number of communes 280; Como (38,174), Varese (17,666), Cantù (10,725), Lecco (10,352), total of province 594,304, number of communes 510; Cremona (36,848), Casalmaggiore (16,407), Soresina (10,358), total of province 329,471, number of communes 133; Mantua (30,127), Viadana (16,082), Quistello (11,228), Suzzara (11,502), St Benedetto Po (10,908), total of province 315,448, number of communes 68; Milan (490,084), Monza (42,124), Lodi (26,827), Busto Arsizio (20,005), Legnano (18,285), Seregno (12,050), Gallarate (11,952), Codogno (11,925), total of province 1,450,214, number of communes 297; Pavia (33,922), Vigevano (23,560), Voghera (20,442), total of province 504,382, number of communes 221; Sondrio (7077), total of province 130,966, number of communes 78. The total population of Lombardy was 4,334,099. In most of the provinces of Lombardy there are far more villages than in other parts of Italy except Piedmont; this is attributable partly to their mountainous character, partly perhaps to security from attack by sea (contrast the state of things in Apulia).

Previous to the fall of the Roman republic Lombardy formed a part of Gallia Transpadana, and it was Lombardy, Venetia and Piedmont, the portion of the Italian peninsula N. of the Po, that did not receive citizenship in 89 B.C. but only Latin rights. The gift of full citizenship in 49 B.C. made it a part of Italy proper, and Lombardy and Piedmont formed the 11th region of Augustus (Transpadana) while Venetia and Istria formed the 10th. It was the second of the regions of Italy in size, but the last in number of towns; it appears, however, to have been prosperous and peaceful, and cultivation flourished in its fertile portions. By the end of the 4th century A.D. the name Liguria had been extended over it, and Milan was regarded as the capital of both. Stranger still, in the 6th century the old Liguria was separated from it, and under the name of _Alpes Cottiae_ formed the 5th Lombard province of Italy.