"Fiery lances and armies appearing from the north." ~ Gregory the Great and the devastation of Roman Italy by the Lombards

St. Gregory the Great writing his Dialogues while an invalid under a doctor’s care.
A 14th century fresco from the Bardi Chapel at Santa Maria Novella basilica in Florence. Link.

March 12 is the feast day of Pope Saint Gregory the Great on the traditional Catholic calendar. It also marks the date of his death in AD 604. One of the greatest Popes, Gregory reigned for 14 of the most tumultuous years in Church history, preoccupied as it was with the ongoing Lombard invasion of Italy. Wracked with a chronic illness, Gregory nonetheless managed Church and civil affairs with vigor and aplomb as prompted by the Holy Spirit. His reign is often considered the bridge between the ancient Papacy and the medieval Papacy in which the Pope played the role of temporal and ecclesiastical ruler.

The Lombards were a powerful Germanic tribe that had lived in the former province of Panonia during the century following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They had formed a substantial part of the mercenary force brought into Italy as part of the army of Narses the Eunuch, Justinian’s grand chamberlain-turned-general, who decisively and finally defeated the Ostrogoths in Italy in the 550s AD. This tour of duty no doubt resulted in the Lombards returning to their homelands with fantastic tales of spoils, rich farmlands, pleasant climates, and poorly defended cities.

In AD 568, the Lombards invaded Italy in force under their king, Alboin. Some historians of the time, including Isidore of Seville writing about fifty years after the event, indicate that the Lombards were invited into Italy by the elderly Narses who found himself removed from office by Justinian’s successor, Justin II, and in conflict with the empress Sophia. Isidore writes in his Chronicon: 

The patricius Narses, after he had overcome King Totila of the Goths in Italy in the time of the Augustus Justinian, was frightened by the threats of the empress Sophia, wife of Justin, and so invited the Lombards from Pannonia and introduced them into Italy. [Isidore, Chronicon, Sixth Age of the World]

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Writing at about the same time, the anonymous author of the Liber Pontificalis provides a slightly different story, saying that the citizens of Rome petitioned Justin II to recall Narses because he was reducing them to penury. Hearing about this, Narses left Rome and retired to Naples where he wrote to the Lombards inviting them to come and possess Italy for themselves. 

In her footnote commenting on this passage in her translation of the Liber Pontificalis, Louise Ropes Loomis gives a good summary of 6th and 7th century historical sources which relate the story of Narses’s perfidy, including The Origo Gentis Langobardum, Isidore's Chronicon, and the 7th century Chronicle of Fredegarius. It is this last source which first relates an anecdote which may help explain Narses’s anger, for it is said that Justin and Sophia sent a threatening letter to Narses, and that Sophia further sent a golden distaff—an implement used for spinning thread—along with a note encouraging Narses to return to spinning with the women since he was no man. Enraged by this insult, Narses is said to have replied, “I shall spin a thread than neither of them will be able to unravel in their lifetimes.” It should be pointed out that most scholars view this story as a picturesque legend which doesn’t jive well with mentions of Narses’s last years and death in other contemporary sources.

Bursting across the frontier, the Lombards soon devastated most of Italy, meeting little resistance from the dispirited and outnumbered Roman armies. A few strongholds remained in Roman hands along the coasts which could easily be kept supplied by ship. Gregory would be sent as apocrisiarius, or official emissary of Pope Pelagius II, to Constantinople in AD 579, to beg help from the emperor against the Lombard attack. There he remained for six years and failed utterly in his mission to bring fresh imperial troops to Italy. Due to the ongoing conflicts with Persia, there were no soldiers to be had for Italy.

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In his Dialogues, Gregory the Great provides numerous vignettes which well illustrate the grim situation in Italy during this time. Following are a few of them. Though originally recounted to provide a moral or theological lesson, these passages provide snapshots of the kind of treatment that the Romans of Italy received from the Lombard invaders which very likely reflected the reality of the situation. The first describes how the Lombards did not shrink from desecrating Catholic holy places in their search of loot:

At such time as the Lombards came into the province of Valeria, [ca. AD 571] the monks of the monastery of the reverent man Equitius fled from thence into the oratory, to the holy man's sepulcher, into which place the cruel men entering, they began by violence to pull the monks forth, either to torment them, or else with their swords to kill them. Amongst whom one sighed, and for very bitter grief cried out: "Alas, alas, holy Equitius, is it thy pleasure, and art thou content, that we should be thus miserably haled and violently drawn forth, and dost not thou vouchsafe to defend us?"

Which words were no sooner spoken, but a wicked spirit possessed those savage soldiers in such sort that, falling down upon the ground, they were there so long tormented, until all the rest of the Lombards which were without understood of the matter, to the end that none should be so hardy as to presume to violate that holy place. And thus, as the holy man at that time defended his own monks, so did he likewise afterward succor and preserve many more that fled unto the same place. [Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, Book I, Chapter 4]

In another anecdote, Gregory shows how the nominally Christian Lombards retained their pagan ways, to the point of martyring those Christian Romans who refused to participate in them:

For about fifteen years since, as they report who might very well have been present, forty husbandmen of the country were taken prisoners by the Lombards, whom they would needs have enforced to eat of that which was sacrificed to idols: but when they utterly refused so to do, or so much as once to touch that wicked meat, then they threatened to kill them, unless they would eat it: but they, loving more eternal than transitory life, continued constant, and so they were all slain. What then were these men? what else but true martyrs, that made choice rather to die than, by eating of that which was unlawful, to offend their Creator? [Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, Book III, Chapter 27]

In a similar passage, Gregory describes a pagan ritual performed by some Lombards, and their violent reaction when their Christian prisoners would not reverence their sacrifice:

At the same time, the Lombards, having almost four hundred prisoners in their hands, did, after their manner, sacrifice a goat's head to the devil: running round about with it in a circle, and by singing a most blasphemous song did dedicate it to his service. And when they had themselves with bowed heads adored it, then would they also have enforced their prisoners to do the like. But a very great number of them choosing rather by death to pass unto immortal life, than by such abominable adoration to preserve their mortal bodies, refused utterly to do what they commanded them; and so would not by any means bow down their heads to a creature, having always done that service to their Creator: whereat their enemies, in whose hands they were, fell into such an extreme rage, that they slew all them with their swords, which would not join with them in that sacrilegious fact. [Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, Book III, Chapter 28]

In this last passage, Gregory describes the prophetic vision which Redemptus, Bishop of the city of Ferenti, experienced prior to the arrival of the Lombards. This passage allows us an idea of the severe damage that the Lombards inflicted upon Italy during their invasion, which must have seemed to many like the end of the world:

[Redemptus] said that upon a certain day, as he was, according to his manner, visiting of his diocese, he came to the church of the blessed martyr Euthychius: and when it was night he would needs be lodged nigh to the sepulcher of the martyr, where after his travel he reposed himself. About midnight, being, as he said himself, neither perfectly waking, nor yet sleeping, but rather heavy of sleep, he felt his waking soul oppressed with great sorrow: and being in that case, he saw the same blessed martyr Euthicius standing before him, who spake thus: "Art thou waking, Redemptus?" to whom he answered, that he was. Then the martyr said: "The end of all flesh is come: the end of all flesh is come": which words after he had repeated thus three times, he vanished out of his sight.

Then the man of God rose up, and fell to his prayers with many tears. And straight after, those fearful sights in heaven followed: to wit, fiery lances, and armies appearing from the north. Straight after likewise the barbarous and cruel nation of the Lombards, drawn as a sword out of a sheath, left their own country, and invaded ours: by reason whereof the people, which before for the huge multitude were like to thick corn-fields, remain now withered and overthrown: for cities be wasted, towns and villages spoiled, churches burnt, monasteries of men and women destroyed, farms left desolate, and the country remaineth solitary and void of men to till the ground, and destitute of all inhabitants: beasts possessing those places, where before great plenty of men did dwell. [Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, Book III, Chapter 38]

If you have never embarked upon reading the Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great in full, I highly recommend it. The work is filled with early Medieval tales and fascinating anecdotes alluding to legendary saints and incredible miracles, but even the most skeptical historian can derive much of worth from perusing the pages. Plus, it contains within its pages the earliest and most complete biography of that other paragon of the Western Church, Saint Benedict of Nursia. If you don't have time to read the whole work, I have excerpted a good bit of it in other articles on this blog:

• When Saint Benedict met Totila, King of the Goths
• "I beseech you to pray unto our Lord for me" ~ Ancient Roots of the Doctrine of Purgatory, Part II
• The curious tale of Florentius and the bear ~ early 6th century Italy
• Saint Maurus Walks on Water ~ As told by Pope Saint Gregory the Great
• "Cut off a thong of his skin" ~ The martyrdom of Saint Herculanus AD 549
• "Now, leave if you can" ~ Saint Scholastica and her brother, Saint Benedict
• "The blessed pope John, worn by illness, gave up the ghost and died in prison" ~ Pope Saint John I, a political martyr of the 6th century AD
• Saint Benedict Chases the Devil off a Boulder
• "The fire marvelous strangely turned back" ~ Saint Marcellinus of Ancona
• Paulinus of Nola ~ A Roman plutocrat who became a Christian saint