| Pot Referenfistiintifici: i Pee ie | Ge Narn Aurel (ESCM de Paton) ‘Frof. univ. dr toan Pinzaru (Universitatea din Bucuresti) @rient et Occident ae Construction bes ibentités en Europe médigvale Seeks eceeteee ea Tonia Lang {Unt cre} ‘Sous la direction de LUMINITA DIACONU ‘BRINDUSA GRIGORIU DTW & machetaree grafic a cope: Emeliae-Danila AmramSommaire / Contents Avant-propos ...7 ae aes cree nme) Défintions de Maelo! dar TOxent ot dans ¥Orctent cde. Robert Mirici ‘The Figure of Hermolaoe: the Orlental Identity ‘of an Occidental Demon? ...29 Ecaterina Lung ‘Paul the Deacon and the Identity of the Lombards between Byzantium and the West. 43 Ana-Maria Riducan ety fe Soe eee tos. Shaping an Identity... 65 Citilina Girbea Ledit du vai ancl ou le paradone de aliéritéfraternelle 75, Mihaela Voicu ‘L/autre peut-il devenir mon prochain? ‘Métamorphoses de la perception de Oriental ppar les chroniqueurs francais (XIT-XIV* sidces) .. 93Luminita Ciuchindel Le Prétre Jean a la lumiére des chroniques et des relations ‘de voyage occidentales (XII-XV' siécles) . 19 Luminifa Diaconu Les Plerins occidentaux face & Valtérité orientale préjugés et vécus d'une rencontre vouse & I'échec (XIII-XIV* sidcls) .. 135 Ovidiu Cristea Knocking at the Enemy's Gate: Gesture of Power of Bogdan III of Moldavia (1509) ... 153, Sarolta Solean Létranger dans la société des Pays Roumains au Moyen Age 173. ‘Anca Irina Ionescu Dimitrie Cantemir and Sofronie Vrachanski ~ The Beginning of the Modern Bulgarian Culture and Literature ... 197 VARIA Oscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernandez Persiay I icha europea por la supremacia mundial. Ccreacion de dentitidadesorentates a combenzos del siglo XVI. 201 Les Auteurs ...225Paul the Deacon and the Identity of the Lombards between Byzantium and the West ECATERINA LUNG Résumé Le probléme de Tidentité des peuples barbares constitue aujourd‘hui un grand sujet de débat dans Yhistoriographie. Nous nous proposons ici ‘analyser comment une source historique, L’Histoire des Lombards (Historia Langobardorum), écrite & la fin du VIIF siécle par Paul Diacre, témoigne dx processus de formation de Yidentité lombarde et en méme temps contribue & ‘maintenir cette identité aprés la disparition du royaume lombard, Les deux ples entre lesquels les Lombards de Paul Diacre doivent « naviguer » pour ‘trouver leur propre identité sont le monde barbare occidental et Empire ‘Byzantin, ennemi a combattre et modéle &suivre, ‘The problem of identity has become central in recent decades in the research on late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, a period characterized by the disruption of existing structures through large-scale migrations. The ethnic map of Europe was changing and new people were entering the stage of history. To decipher the process of creating new identities that lay the foundation of medieval identities, several categories of sources can be used 43ECATERINA LUNG including historical narratives that are of primary importance. Paul ‘the Deacon, who was born around 720 in Cividale, Friuli, in an ancient Lombard family and who died after 790 at Monte Cassino, a participant in the cultural movement of the Carolingian Renaissance, is the most important historian of the Lombards! His major work, History of the Lombards (Historia Langobardorum), written towards the end of his life, places him in a series of historians and chroniclers of the Barbarians who succeeded in the complicated process of formation of successoral? kingdoms on the territory of the old Roman Empire. The definition and assertion of the identity of a barbarian people is an essential issue for each of the authors of these historical works and Paul the Deacon is one of the best examples. It should be noted from the beginning that you cannot find the word identity in the work of Paul the Deacon, who speaks, like all the authors of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, about peoples (gentes) and their history. The concept of collective identity, which I will use in this article, is of modem origin and it can be defined as a set of physical, psychological and characterological traits and elements of material and spiritual 1 Walter Pohl, « Pout the Deacon - Between Sacci and Marsupia », Ego trouble, Authors and Ther Identities in the Early Middle Ages, eds. Richard CCoxradini, Mathew Gilli, Rosamond Maditteric, Itene Van Renswoude Osterreichische Akademie der Wissentschaften, Forschungenzut Geschichte des Mittelalters Band 15, Wien, Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010, p. 110. 2 For the analysis of Paul the Deacon's importance in the Early Middle ‘Ages, the essential work still remains Walter Gotfart, The Narrators of Barborian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon, Peinceton, Princeton University Press, 1988.PAUL-THEDEACON AND THEIDENITTY OF THE LOMBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THEWEST nature that are considered by a social group as its own’. From the Perspective of social psychology, “every community is characterized both by features of social or collective order and by more specific traits that distinguish it from others. Therefore, features of social or collective order, on the one hand, lie within the social or collective identity (associated with membership of a ‘gtoup or groups, in connection with a certain position in the social structure). These traits come from the membership groups to which an individual feels similar and also from realising their differences when compared to other groups”*. Even if identity can be defined ethnically, socially and culturally, historians (just like anthropologists) looked especially at ethnic identity because it was to them the reference point par excellence’. For a long time, from the nineteenth century onwards, ethnic identity was considered as established once and for all at the time when a people is first mentioned in historical sources. It was only in the 1960's that historians and anthropologists began to debate this assertion®. Later on, it became obvious that the > Luminifa-Mihaela lacob, « Imagologia $i ipostazele alteritifi: steXini, ‘minoritari,exclusi », Minortari, marginal, exclus, dir. Adrian Neculau, Gilles Ferréol, lagi, Polirom, 1996, p. 46. ‘Richard Wittorski, «La notion d'identité collective», La question identitaie dans le travail et la formation: contributions de la recherche, état des pratiques et étude bibliographique, dirs. M. Kaddouti, C. Lespessalles, ‘M. Maillebouis et M. Vasconcelos, Paris, L'Harmattan, Logiques Sociales, 2008, p. 197 (our translation). 5 Piere Bonte, Michel Tzard (dir.), Dictionnaire de Uethmologie et de Vanthropologie, Pari, PUF, 2004, p.799, © The first historian to underline the fluid character of identities was Reihard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfessung: Das Verden der 45ECATERINA LUNG intellectuals of the “century of nations” were projecting onto the past a reality of their own time, the nation, called by Benedict Anderson, in a book that has become famous, “imagined community’?. It was, in fact, a community in the creation of which these romantic intellectuals had a major contribution. Reinhard Wenskus opened a research field still valid today when he showed that for the period of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, essential for the genesis of the medieval ancestors of modem peoples, ethnicity was not a biological and linguistic reality, but a political construct’. It is part of the “Vienna School”, represented by followers like Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl, who developed his ideas on “tradition core” (Traditionskern), a concept that specifies the traditions of the dominant group in a community that are appropriated by the other members, who may be of a different ethnicity, but identify themselves with the dominant ethnic group’. ‘As Walter Pohl has shown, the biological component of ethnic identity, so dear to scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, lost its importance and racist excesses could be avoided {frimittelalterlichen Gentes, Koln, 1961. For the anthropologists, the most ‘authoritative still remains Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. ‘The Organization of Social Difference, Oslo, Universitetstorlaget, 1969. 7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Londan, Verso Editions INLB, 1983. "Patrick J. Geary, Mitul natiunilor. Originile medienle ale Europe, Tagoviste, Editura Cetatea de Scaun, 2007, (Romanian translation by Alexandru Madgearu of The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton, 2002), p. 59. > Reihard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung.., passim. 46_PAULTHEDEACON AND THIEIDENITTY OF TE LOMBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM ANDTHE WEST in this way". Ethnic identity was tied to the holders of political power, the elites who had imposed their own family traditions on their subjects". Ethnicity is thus shown as a social and cultural construct, a form of mobilization to achieve certain political goals”. ‘As we have already said, anthropologists working on contemporary communities had made the same kind of assumptions about identity construction as part of a long-lasting pprocess!, Ethnic identity is transactional in nature, being the result of interactions between human groups. It “is a definition of self andjor others, rooted in power relations of groups gathered around a specific interest” ‘These visions of ethnic identity are more accepted today by historians, who point out that for the period at the beginning of the Middle Ages, ethnicity was socially conditioned, because a person could change his or her identity if accepted into the ruling group of another people. Ethnic discourse became an instrument to gain political power'®. Walter Pohl, « Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition: A Response», On Barbarian entity. Critical Approaches to Eniciy in the Early Middle Ages dix. Andrew Gillet, Brepols, Tumhout, 2002, pp. 221-225 1 Patrice. GEARY, Mitul naiunior op. cit, p. 17. Florin Curta, Aporifa slvile. Itorie si arheologie la Duridren de Jos tn ‘eacurile VI-VI, Targoviste, Editura « Cetatea de Soaun », 2006 1 Piere Bonte, Michel Izard (di), Dictionnaire... op. cit, p.799. 1 Ugo Fabietti, Videntiéethnique. Histoire et critique d'un concept ambigu, trad, fr, André Sleiman, Paris, 2008, p. 4 "5 Against the general application of the idea of tradition core to every barbarian people, Walter Goffart has shown thatthe collective memory cannot last more than three generations and it is necessary to appeal to ‘written sources which are not always available. In conclusion, the traditions called upon for maintaining the cohesion of a barbarian 7ECATERINA LUNG If we have defined identity as a set of specific characteristics of a certain group, otherness is what is seen as outside the group, seeing each other's differences”. The definition of otherness often includes an image of the Other which is negative, in order to justify an a priori hostile behaviour, even an aggressive one’. It is ‘true that you can sometimes find situations when otherness is seen ina positive way in relation to the in-group that is devalued. Paul the Deacon is a very valuable source for studying the mechanisms of creation and the affirmation of a positive identity for his own in-group, Gens Langobardorum. Even though he was invited to the court of Charlemagne who had conquered in 774 the kingdom of the Lombards and was commissioned several works for the glory of the new empire, Paul remains deeply attached to his people”. There was a rather extended debate in historiography to establish the reasons for the rather peculiar tone of the History of the Lombards, which seems to ignore the disappearance of the independent kingdom of the Lombards and their integration into people are frequently invented. See Walter Goffat, « Does the Distant Past Impinge on the Invasion Age Germans? », in A. Gilet (di), On Barbarian... op. cit, psp 21-2. ° ‘Walter Pohl, « introduction: Strategies of Distinction» in Walter Pohl, Helimut Reimitz (dic), Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Commnites. 300-30, Leiden-Boston-Kaln, Bil, 1998, p.2. Philippe Grollet, Lacité: utopie et néesté, Paris, Editions Labor & Espace de Liberts, 2005. 1 Serge Moscovic, « Fenomenal reprezentirilr sociale, in Repent sociale, A. Nicolau, G, Ferréo (x), lag, Poirom 1997, p-35. » Helene Ahrweller, « image de V Autre et les mécanismes de altérité», Rapporis, Congr International d'Histoire, vol Stuttgart, 1985, p64 2 Marios Costanbeys, Matthew Innes and Siznon Mclean, The Carolingian World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p14,_PAUL-THEDEACON AND THIEIDENTITY OFTHE LOMBARD BETWEEN 5¢ZANTIUM AND THE WEST the empire of Charlemagne because his work ends with the reign of Liutprand, in 744, thirty years before the conquest with which Paul the Deacon was contemporary. It was thought, beginning with Walter Goffart, that Paul tried to offer the Lombard subjects, of the Franks an instrument to keep alive the memory of their past and their identity”. It was also said, as did Rosamond McKitterick, that the history of the Lombards, which has been written for the court of Charlemagne where Paul was invited, represented a kind of manual to allow the Franks to better understand and appreciate their Lombard subjects. ‘Whatever his intentions were, Paull the Deacon provided an essential source for our understanding of the Lombard identity in the late eighth century. At the same time, his History of the Lombards could provide the basis for the construction of this identity, like many other historical works of this period. Firstly, Imust say that Paul the Deacon presented his people as an ethnic entity, even if today we know that, despite being 2 More details about this controversial issue in Walter Pohl, « Paul the Deacon = between sacci and marsupia », art cit, p. 114. 2 Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History... op cit, p- 533. ® Rosamond Mckitterick, « Paul the Deacon and the Franks », Early ‘Medieval Europe, vol. 8, nt. 3, 1999, pp. 319-338. 2 Walter Pobl, « Paolo Diacono et la construzione del'identita longobarda », in Paolo Chiesa (di), Paolo Diacono — uno scrttore fra tradizione longobarda rinovamento carolingio, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Cividale del Friuli-Udine 1999, Udine, 2000, pp. 413-426. 2% Walter Pohl, « Introduction: Ethnicity, Religion and Empire », in Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, Richard Payne (dir.), Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World. The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World. 300-1100, London, Ashgate, 2012, p.10. 49ECATERINA LUNG defined as homogenous with the help of ethnic terminology, the barbarians were, in fact, assemblies of peoples and individuals of diverse origins’. To present a positive identity for the group he belonged to, Paul had to appeal to common features characterizing his people but also to use references to the Others, with which his people came into contact and sometimes into conflict. But who are the Others, from the point of view of a monk of barbarian origin ‘educated in the classical Greek-Roman system? In the dlassical tradition inherited by the successor kingdoms of the Roman Empire, there was a strong opposition between the Romans and the barbarians, the former as representatives of civilization and the latter of the world of barbarism”. Barbarians ‘were defined from an ethnic point of view, as members of different _gentes, while the Romans in Late Antiquity represented a political category”. First, it should be noted that Paul placed at the centre of his historiographical work a barbarian people by applying to it, though, the Roman system of interpretation, which placed the barbarians outside the civilized world. Hence the difficult task assumed by the historian rallied to the cause of a Germanic people to find arguments in favour of his people. This sometimes is done by an “arrangement” of the historical facts, by a favourable selection and a partisan interpretation of the events presented. % Walter Pohl, «Goths and Huns», in Jeremy Mcinemey (dir), A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, 2014, p. 558. » Yves Albert Dauge, Le Barbare, Recherches sur a conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation, Bruxelles, Latomus, 1981, passim. % Chris Wickam, «Conclusions », in Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, Richard Payne (dir.), Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World. The ‘West, Byzantium and the Islamic World. 300-1100, op. cit, p-553. 50PAULTHEDEACON AND THEIDENITTY OF THELOMBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST ‘Then, we must observe that in Paul the Deacon’s work, as in the works of the other “narrators of barbarian histories”, to use Walter Goffart’s expression, the opinion of the barbarians is presented for the first time in a direct manner. Until then they were deemed marginal to the civilized world, which occupied the centre of the universe and was ruled by the Romans. Paul seems to imply, among the first in the Mediterranean world, that the Other is the Roman®. One can imagine that there was a barbarian idea of the Romans, from the early contacts between the two communities, but there was no written evidence of this. ‘We can often find in the work of Paul the Deacon stories about other barbarian peoples, gentes in the classical terminology used by the author. Even if he is aware that the Lombards are part of the same category, we will see later, that he considers the real barbarians to be the others. Therefore one of the originalities of his work is analysing the relationship between his own community and the Others using a tripolar system, not a bipolar one, as in classical ethnography. The work of Paul the Deacon presents firstly a Chosen People, the Lombards, ethnically barbarians, but civilised through Christianisation and the adoption of Roman cultural and political traditions, then the other barbarians, and finally the Romans. ‘Thus, we can say, as did Frangois Paschoud about Salvian, that Paul the Deacon lives in a world turned upside down, because “the barbarians were civilized and Romans have become the real barbarians” °° [analysed Patil the Deacon's concept of the Roman world in Ecaterina Lung, ‘«Le monde romain dans l'Historia Langobardonim de Paul Diacre», Armuarul Institutului Romi de ctu i ceretari umaniste, Venetia, 2002, pp. 9-18. %® Frangois Paschoud, « Le Mythe de Rome a la fin de l'Empire et dans lesECATERINA LUNG To better understand the reference system used by Paul, we ‘must remember that the term “Romans” has several meanings in the eighth century; its connotations are, as already mentioned, political, but also regional and rarely ethnic. The same word can define the Latin-speaking population of Italy, found there and mistreated by the Lombards and the Byzantines with which the Lombards fight relentlessly for centuries". Giving the same name to different groups is partly explained by the fact that Paul, like all his contemporaries, did not seem aware of the chronological gap between the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire. And “Byzantine” is a term that the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire never applied to themselves, as they continued to think that they were “Romans” ~ Rhomaioi. Paul was one of the first Western authors to use in an extended manner the term “Greeks” for the Byzantines instead of “Romans” ot “soldiers” (nilites), as was customarily used in late Antique and in early medieval sources®. He made the distinction between the Romans who are the Latin- ‘Mondo Antico al Meitio Evo. Da Teadorico a San Gregorio Magno, Roma, 197, Atti dei Convegni Lince, 45, 1980, p. 136. ® Further details about the fate of Roman and Byzantine elites in Italy after the Lombard conquest, in Stefano Gaspari, « Le elite romane di fronte ai Longobardi », in F. Bougard, L. Feller et R. Le Jan (dir), Les lites au Haut Moyen Age, Turnhout, Brepols , 2006, pp. 143-166. © Stefano Gaspari, « Bisanzio e I Longobardi. 1 Rapport fra YImpero ed tuna stirpe barbarica al tramonto del sistema tardo-antico », in G. ‘Amaldi e G. Cavallo (dir), Europa medievale e mondo bizantino. Contatti cfettivie possibilit di studi comparati (Tavola rotunda del XVIII Congresso del Cish, Montréal, 29 augusto 1995), Roma, 1997, p. 45. Chris Wickam, The Inheritance of Rome. A History of Rome from 400 to_PAULTHIEDEACON AND THEIDENITTY OFTHE LOMBARDS BETWEEN 5YZANTIUM AND THE WEST speaking population of Italy and the Greeks, who are the Byzantines, when he has shown how the emissaries of the Italians complain to emperor Justin II and his wife Sophia against the abuses of Narses: “It would be advantageous for the Romans to serve the Goths rather than the Greeks wherever the eunuch Narses rules and oppresses us with bondage”. Moreover, the Byzantines could be even called in derision Graeculi, Little Greeks®. ‘The uses of ethnical and political terminology are not neutral and prove the ideological purposes of Pauls historical work. The barbarian peoples are named using the conventional ethnical appellations used in this period, sometimes with archaising terms, as the Avars named Huns*, This attention to terminology proves that Paul knows very well the proper name of ‘a people and that he chooses the one he prefers depending on what he tries to show. He has to help the Lombards define themselves as a people with a clear identity in relation to the other barbarian peoples of the same Germanic origin (Franks, Gepids, ‘Vandals, Goths, etc: or of other origins (Avars, Slavs, Bulgarians). The Lombards shared the barbarian origin with their neighbours and were frankly characterised by Paul as behaving with barbarity”. But in Paul's opinion they seemed to cease to be barbarians any more once they settled in Italy. Their belonging to a st HISTORY OF THE LANGOBARDS (Historia Langobardorum) by Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus), translated by William Dudley Foulke,1907, reprinted by the University of Pennsylvania, 1974, I 5 (further abbreviated as HL). 8 HL, V,16;V, 10. 6 HLL, XXVIL: Avars, who were first called Huns, and afterwards Avars. 7 HILL 10: the blessed patriarch Paul presided over the city of Aquileia and is people an, faring the barbarty of he Langoburds fl from Aquileia tothe ilan of Grado. 53BCATERINA LUNG. larger barbarian world is shown when the author describes their entrance in Italy together with other peoples: It is certain that Alboin then brought with him to Italy many men from rious peoples which either other kings or he himself had taken. Whence, even until today, soe call the villages in which they dwell Gepidan, Bulgarian, Sarmatian, Pennonian, Suabian, Norican, or by other names ofthis kind * If we carefully read this passage we can observe that in this enumeration Paul doesn't make any difference between the barbarians and the Latin-speaking peoples (Pannoni, Norici) from former Roman provinces, upon which no imperial authority manifests itself anymore. The Lombard identity is firstly defined in relation and in ‘opposition to the barbarian world. They can ally with other barbarian peoples, as with the Avars against the Gepids®. The ‘Avars received Pannonia when the Lombards were invited by ‘Narses in Italy, upon the condition that they be allowed to return there afterwards if they wanted to®. Paul expresses the idea of a certain unity of the Germanic world when he says that there was a common tradition about Alboin, the first Lombard king in Italy: But the name of Alboin tas spread abroad far and wide, so illustrious, that even up to this time his noble bearing and glory, the good fortune of his wars * HL UL, 26. HLL. © HL, TL 7. One of the first modern authors to accept Paul's assertion that the Lombards were called in Italy by the Byzantines to fight the Goths was Neil Christie, « Invasion ot Invitation ? The Longobard Occupation of Northem Italy, A.D. 568-569 », Romanobarbarice, 11, 1991, pp. 79-108._PAUILTHEDEACON AND THEIDENTITY OFTHE LOMBARDS BETWEEN 8¥ZANIIUM AND THE WES and his courage are celebrated, not only among the Bavarians and the Saxons, ‘but also among other men ofthe same tongue in their songs.* But the most frequent kind of relations between the Lombards and the other barbarians are conflictual. After their leaving of Scandinavia they enter into a war with the Vandals, and this initial conflict leads to a change of their name from Winnili into Langobardi®. After their conquest of Italy, except for the usual fights with the Byzantines, the dominant conflict seems to be with the Franks. The Avars were also a permanent threat. Usually, Paul presents the Lombards as the winners in these conflicts, fighting heroically and behaving with dignity even when they were conquered. The Lombards’ identity initially seemed to be a barbarian one, centred on warrior values®. This barbarian identity was abandoned when they settled on Italian soil, having then a patria, organising a kingdom under the authority of a king using Roman and Byzantine models and becoming a people unified by the same orthodox Christianism*. The true barbarians remained those who lived outside of this world in which Paul and his chosen people lived, and who are neither Lombards nor Romans (Byzantines)®. © HLL. © HLL? © For the initial barbarian ethos of the Lombards see Fcaterina Lung, «Liidéal moral dans Historia Langobardorum de Paul Diacre », Anuarul Institutului Romn de culturd gi cercetiri umanist, Venetia, 2003, pp. 487-495. “4 These components of the new identity can be summarized as pri, rexel _gens sua, ag Suzanne Teillet did for the Wisigothic kingdom of Spain; see ‘Suzanne Teilet, Des Goths & la nation gothique. Les origines de dé de mation en Occident du V' au VIF siete, Pars, Les Belles Lettres, 1984, pp. 7-8. ‘© Eeaterina Lung, « Neglecting Barbarian Identity in Barbarian Kingdoms in the Writings of the 6th-Sth Century Historians », Analele UniversitifitECATERINA LUNG From a political point of view, the end of the barbarian period of Lombard history comes after a period of ruling by dukes, when royalty is reinstated with the election of Authari as king. From then on, the peace and the respect of the law, characteristics of a civilised state, as the Roman one, can be found in the Lombard kingdom: ‘There was indeed this admirable thing in the kingdom of the Longobards, There tas no violence, no amiuscades were lid, no one constrained another unjustiy, no one took spoils, there were no thefts, no robberies, every one proceeded whither he pleased, safe and without fear*# Authari has taken the imperial cognomen Flavius which linked him in a fictitious way to the second Flavian dynasty, that of Emperor Constantine. From this moment on, Paul seems to believe that the Lombards ceased to be barbarians and became something else, close to a Roman model. In reality, a careful analysis of Paul's work shows that the Lombard royalty continued to be weak and the kings had only the kind of “parcelled sovereignty” of an older barbarian kind’. The religious component of Lombard identity was quite important, both during the barbarian period of their history and after that. Firstly, their religious identity is a pagan, Germanic one, subject to evolution and transformation. An important change of religion seemed to occur when the Lombards, still called Winnili, were about to pass from the mythical period of their existence, in Scandinavia, into a historical one, on the continent. The Vandals tried to impose a tribute on them, that Winnili refused to pay, so both parts prayed to the god Wotan (called Godan by Paul) for victory. “HL, 10, 16 © Peter Sarris, Empires of Faith... op. cit, p. 312. 56PAULTHEDEACON AND THEIDENTTTY OF THE LOMBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST At this point, the men of old tell a silly story that the Vandals coming to Godan (Wotan) besought him for victory over the Winnili and that he answered that he would give the victory to those whom he saw frst at sunrise; that then Gamibara went to Frea (Freja) wife of Godan, and asked for victory for the Winnil, and that Frea gave her counsel thatthe women of the Winnili ‘should take down their hair and arrange it upon the face lke a beard, and that in the early morning they should be present with their husbands and in like ‘manner station themselves to be seen by Godan from the quarter in which he ‘had been wont to look through his window toward the east. And soit was done. ‘And when Godan sato them at sunrise he said: “Who are these long-beards?” ‘And then Frea induced him to give the victory to those to whom he had given the name, And thus Godan gave the victory to the Winn Herwig Wolfram explained this curious story as a change of religion. Wotan was a god from a newer generation of gods, Aesyr, while the Winnili adored the older generation, Vanir, to whom Freya, his wife, belonged (it seems that Paul confused the two goddesses, Frigg and Freya). We know from later Scandinavian sources that Wotan had Langbadhr ~The Long Bearded One- as a surname, so when he mistakenly named the Winnili after himself, he was forced, in a mythical logic, to give them victory, too. In exchange, Winnili changed their name to Langobardi and accepted to worship the Aesyr®, Paul didn’t seem to understand too much of this tradition and as a Christian he was more interested in the Christian identity of the Lombards. But even in this respect he doesn’t give exact information about the Lombards’ religious evolution. On the basis of some information he offered about the Arianism of the HL, VIL © Herwig Wolfram, « Origo et Religio. Ethnic Traditions and Literature in Early Medieval Texts», Early Medieval Europe, 1994, vol.3, nr. 1, pp. 19-38. 57LECATERINA LUNG Lombards during their arrival in Italy, the modem scholars achieved a sort of consensus about them being heretics at the end of the 6th century, Some decades ago, the attentive analysis of Paul the Deacon's work made by Steven Fanning showed that the Lombard Arianism was rather peripheral, and other scholars suggested that there were differences between a pagan majority of the population and an elite split between the different Christian confessions*, The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea knew that the Lombards were Orthodox Christian in the 6" century, because they used identity of religious confession to ask the Byzantines for help against the heretic Gepids®. It is possible that during their stay in Pannonia some Lombards accepted the orthodox Christianity while a majority remained pagan. After entering Italy, through contact with other barbarians and especially with the Ostrogoths, a part of them became Arian. One of the possible explanations of the role of Arianism within the Lombard society is the traditional view about it being a strategy of distinction from the Byzantines and the Latin-speaking population. The reality that is not visible in Paul’s history is that during the 6th century Italy was the stage for a conflict between three, not two, different Christian confessions: Orthodoxy, Arianism and the so-called Three Chapter Schism, The Three % Steven C. Fanning, « Lombard Arianism Reconsidered », Speculum, 56, 2,1981, pp. 241-242. 5 Walter Pohl, « Deliberate Ambiguity: The Lombards and Christianity », Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, dir. Guyda Armstrong, and Jan N. Wood, Tumhout, Brepols, 2000, pp. 4849. 5 Procopius, History of the Wars, ed. H. B. Dewing, London-New York, 1914, (ellum Gothicum, 1, 34,24). © Walter Pohl, « Deliberate Ambiguity...» at cit, p.53. 58_PAUL-THE DEACON AND TH:IDENTITY OF THE LOMBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST Chapter Schism was finally overcome only in 698 during the Synod of Pavia, mistakenly placed by Paul in Aquileia. The most evident and the most important religious problem for Paul was the Arianism which inspired some pro-Arian measures taken by king Authari or the open Arian reaction during the reign of Rothari. And it was against the Arianism that the conversion to an Orthodox confession took part, sometime between the end of the 6th century and the beginning of the 7th, during the papacy of Gregory the Great whose relations with queen Theodelinda were so important for this confessional change. Paul the Deacon didn’t offer a precise date for the conversion of a Lombard king with his people to the correct Christian belief, as other historians of the barbarian peoples, like Gregory of Tours or Bede the Venerable, had done before. He only stressed the diplomatic efforts made by the pope Gregory the Great in relation with the Lombard rulers, at the same time his foes and his possible allies®-This ambiguity may suggest that the renouncement of Arianism or paganism was a long and not too spectacular process. In spite of being a monk and of having a quite good theological training, Paul the Deacon seemed to appreciate the political qualities of a king rather than condemn his heretical views, as in the anecdote about the tomb raider being punished by John the Baptist after robbing Rothari’s HL, VIM. 58 Ross Balzaretti, « Theodelinda, ‘Most Glorious Queen’: Gencler and Power in Lombard Italy », The Medieval History Journal, 1999, ne. 2, p. 187. % Francois Bougard, « Petitor et medius : Le rile de la papauté dans les relations intemationales de Grégoire le Grand a Jean VIII », Le Relazioni Internazionali nell‘Alto Medioevo, Spoletto, 8-12 aprile 2010, Atti delle Settimane di Studi sull’Alto Medicevo, LVIIL, Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, Spoleto, 2011, p. 305. 59[ECATERINA LUNG grave™. The respect due to the dead body, growing in importance during the Late Antiquity, was more powerful than any reproaches to the king’s heresy. Anyway, during the 6th century the Arian heresy was finally liminated and ance again an identity of confession was established between the Lombards, the Byzantines and the Latin-speaking population of Italy. The same religious confession helped the assimilation of the Lombards by the Roman population of Italy, so ‘much so that the Germanic idiom was lost when Paul was writing, as proven by the very few examples of Lombard words that he could offer. Accepting the correct Christian belief helped them to achieve a higher stage of civilisation but as a result they lost the last traces of their barbarian, Germanic identity. Paul didn’t seem to think that this shared confession was a key toa better coexistence with the Byzantines, because the conflicts became ‘even more important during the 7th and the 8th centuries, The Byzantines remained the Others, the Alterity in relation to which the Lombard identity was forged. Most of the time enemies of the Lombards, the Byzantines were their essential model from a political and cultural point of view. And here lies one of the great ambiguities of Pau!’s attitude, who can, at the same time, show the Empire as a source of political legitimacy, while manifesting a great antipathy towards the Byzantines as individuals and as a group. Some of the most important model rulers that he described were Byzantine, as © HL,AV,47. % Sean Lafferty, « Ad sencitatem mortuarum: Tomb Raiders, Body Snatchers and Relic Hunters in Late Antiquity », Early Medicoal Europe, 2014, vol 22, ne.3, pp. 249-279, > Choris Wickam, The Inheritance... op. city p.141._PAULTHRDEACON AND THEIDENIZT OFTHE LONBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST, general Narses or Emperor Tiberius, He mentioned the adoption of the Roman-Byzantine political model when he said that Authari took the surname Flavius or when he presented Agilulf crowning his son as coruler in the Milano circus. In 604 the young prince was confirmed in a former Roman capital in the same way that the Byzantine emperor was acclaimed in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, Another rolemodel individual from the Roman-Byzantine world could be considered the pope Gregory the Great, about whom Paul ‘wrote a short Vita and who was subject of an inter-textual discussion in the Historia Langobardorunt. ‘The ordinary Byzantine people are presented in a dismissive ‘way, as being Greeks or even worse, Graecul. Very interesting is the history of Amalongus, the bearer of the royal pike, who, “taking this pike in both hands struck violently with it a certain little Greek and lifted him from the saddle on which he was riding and raised him in the air over his head”, This terrified the whole Byzantine army at the battle of Forino in 663. The diminutive Graeculus signified the physical inferiority of the Byzantines, but it followed a long tradition of derision toward the Greeks, inherited from the Roman past®, © Walter Pohl, « Paul the Deacon - between Sacci and Marsupia », art it, p.114. HL WV, 30. © Stefano Gaspari, « Kinship Rituals and Ideology in Lombard Italy », in Frans Theuws, Janet L, Nelson (dir), Rituals of Power from Late Antiquity fo the Early Mile Ages, Leiden, Beil, 2000, p. 106. © Cheistopher Heath, «Bede and Paul the Deacon », paper presented to the Intemational Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2013, htpsi//www academiaedu (3819224/Carclingian_Correctio.Paul_the, Deacan_and Bede, 08082014. 4 ALY, 10. © Herbert Hunger, Graeculus prfidus ~italsitamos, I senso del'alterta nel 61ECATERINA LUNG. Seeing the Byzantine individuals as inferior doesn’t prevent their world from exercising a certain fascination over the Lombards. When the queen Rosmunda killed her husband, king Alboin, she ‘tried to flee with her lover and accomplice to Constantinople. The Lombard duke Droctulf defected to the Byzantines whom he protected against the Lombards and was buried with a laudatory epitaph in the San Vitale basilica in Ravenna‘. The case of Droctulf is illustrative of the fluidity of identities which is so characteristic of the period. He was a Sueve taken: prisoner very young by the Lombards and then he became a duke. Paul quoted his epitaph which underlined his love for Roman public symbols that made him betray his people. When he was adopted into the Byzantine world he changed his name to Drocton and he may have even changed his confession, if he was an Arian before his defection. ‘A last example of the Byzantine fascination is that of the young Theodotis “of graceful body and adorned with flaxen hair almost to the feet”, whom queen Hermelinda has seen at the baths and imprudently “praised the girl's beauty to king Cunincpert, her husband”. The king made her his mistress and then sent her to a monastery named afterwards Santa Maria Theodotis. Franois Paschoud observed that the Byzantine historian Socrates wrote a quite similar story about Justina who, with more chances than ‘Theodotis, became the wife of the emperor Valentinian I, It is ‘apport greco-omani ed ital-bizantni, Roma, Unione Internazionale degli Isttuti di Archeologi, Storia e Storia dell Arte in Roma. Conferenze; 4 1987. «© HL, D119, © Ibidem, 1,97. Frangois Paschoud, « Le Mythe de Rome ala fin de I'Empire et dans les 62_PAUL-THEDEACON AND THB IDENITTY OFTHE LOMBARDS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST possible that Paul the Deacon, as one of the founders of Carolingian Renaissance and bearer of a great erudition, could have known the history of Socrates. It is also possible that it was only a topos, a kind of Cinderella story or a literary transposition of the fascination that Roman and Byzantine worlds still exerted upon the barbarians. The final sending of the girl into a monastery could signify the ambivalence of the Lombard attitude towards the Byzantine world that fascinated them but also generated rejection. Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards was a very successful writing of its time, as is shown by the very important number of manuscripts preserved®. The possible reasons of its success were the way in which it presented the Lombard identity while contributing to the preservation of this ethnic and cultural group after its loss of political independence. The Lombard identity as forged by Paul the Deacon shows itself as being influenced by different cultural models and by different traditions, barbarian, Roman and Byzantine. The result is a new identity, ‘which ceased to be barbarian, without becoming Roman and which resisted the Carolingian conquest. This new medieval identity is the one which will eventually lead to the modern Italian identity. royaumes romano-barbares », Convegno Internazionale : Passagio dal ‘Mondo Antico at Medio Evo. Da Teodorico « San Gregorio Magno, Roma, 197, Atti dei Convegn Lincei 45 (1980), p. 136. © W. Pohl, « Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy », in Yitzak Hen and M. Innes (dir), The Uses ofthe Past in the Early Middle Ages, ‘Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 11. 63