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…