Francia travelogue – Lombardy

The Lombard tribes came out of the north and east of Europe in the sixth century, under their king Alboin. They settled in northern and central Italy, an area which came to be known, if you can believe it, as Lombardy. The river Po drains from the Alps in the west to the Adriatic in the east, and most of the major Lombard cities, including Milan and the Lombard capital Pavia, sat along the river or its tributaries. The only outposts of the non-Lombard rule were the papal areas and the regions of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which were a part of the eastern Roman empire.

As with all of the Germanic “barbarians,” the Lombards remained pagan through the seventh century. Barbatus of Benevento (admittedly to the south) records that “the people of Benevento indulged in many idolatrous behaviors, including veneration of a golden viper and a local tree.

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