 | Pope Gregory I: Encyclopedia II - Pope Gregory I - Lombards
Pope Gregory I - Lombards
Gregory's independent action in appointing governors to cities, providing munitions of war, giving instructions to generals, sending ambassadors to the Lombard king, and even negotiating a peace without consulting the Emperor's legate, Romanus, Exarch of Ravenna, mark the decisive acts that revealed the papacy as an independent temporal power. Gregory's childhood in the disasters of the Gothic War, his secular cursus honorum, his sojourn in Constantinople, and doubtless his personal assessment of the Exarch, convinced him that no help from the East was to be expected in the confrontations with the Lombards that began his pontificate. Within days of Gregory's consecration, the death of Authari, King of the Lombards, spawned the familiar violence of a Lombard succession. Authari's Queen, the famous Theodelinda, married Agilulf, Lombard dux in Turin, while the independent dukes Ariulf of Spoleto and Arichis of Benevento, threatened papal and imperial territories in the south.
Gregory expressed the difficulty and danger of his position in some of the earliest letters (Epistles I, iii, viii, xxx); but no actual hostilities began until the summer of 592, when a threatening letter from Ariulf of Spoleto was followed by the appearance of the Lombard before the walls of Rome. At the same time Arichis of Benevento advanced on Naples, which happened at the moment to have neither bishop nor any officer of high rank in command of the garrison. Gregory at once took the unprecedented step of appointing a tribune on his own authority to take command of the city (Epistles II, xxxiv), and of arranging a separate peace with the Lombards (Epistles II, xlv).
Gregory's independent action had the effect of rousing Romanus the exarch, who gathered his troops, attacked and regained Perugia, and then marched to Rome, where he was received with imperial honors. The next spring, however, he left the city and took its garrison with him. The exarch's campaign had roused Agilulf who marched on Rome, arriving there probably some time in June, 593. The terror of the moment is reflected in Gregory's homilies on the prophet Ezechiel, which were delivered at this time. The siege of the city was soon abandoned, however, and Agilulf retired; Gregory's confrontation with Agilulf on the steps of the Basilica of Saint Peter outside the walls of Rome, a favored subject of history painters, was the invention of a chronicler, however. In a letter (V, xxxix) Gregory refers to himself as "the paymaster of the Lombards", and apparently silver was the chief inducement to raise the siege.
The pope's urgent need now was to secure a lasting peace with the Lombards, which could only be achieved by a proper arrangement between the imperial authorities and the Lombard chiefs, with the Catholic Theodelinda as go-between. A year was passed in fruitless negotiations, when Gregory began once again to mediate a private treaty even without the consent of the Exarch Romanus. This threat was speedily reported to Constantinople and the Emperor Maurice responded with a violent letter, now lost, received in June 595. Luckily, Gregory's scathing reply has been preserved (Epistles V, xxxvi). Still, Gregory seems to have realized that independent action could not secure what he wished, and we hear no more about a separate peace.
Gregory's relations with the Exarch Romanus continued more and more strained until the latter's death in the year 596 or early in 597. The new exarch, Callinicus, was a skilled diplomat and official peace negotiations were pushed on; the peace agreement signed in 599, to Gregory's great joy, lasted only two years: in 601 the war broke out again through an aggressive act on the part of Callinicus, who was recalled two years later. His successor, Smaragdus, again made a peace with the Lombards which endured until after Gregory's death.
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