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Gargano Comes to Rome: Castel Sant'Angelo's Historical Origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2013

LOUIS SHWARTZ
LOUIS SHWARTZ*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Toronto, 100 George Street, Toronto On M55 3G3; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the early medieval transformation of a pagan Roman monument, Hadrian's tomb, into a Christian fortress consecrated to St Michael. Ado of Vienne's claim that Boniface IV (608–15) dedicated an elevated chapel to the archangel atop the ‘moles Hadriani’ is challenged and reexamined. The many similarities between Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano and this Roman chapel instead indicate that the angelic devotion spread from Gargano to Rome, sometime in the early eighth century, and that the Lombards were the likely transmitters.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 453 - 475
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 Michael's supremacy vis-à-vis the other angels is confirmed in both the New and Old Testaments. The Apocalypse (xii.7–9) recounts his leading role in the first great celestial conflict between God and Satan: ‘And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.’ The Book of Daniel (xii.1) also mentions Michael as the chief guardian of the Israelites: ‘But at that time [of persecution] shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come such as never was from the time that nations began even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book.’ All English passages from the Bible are taken from the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate.

2 ‘Sed non multo post, Romae, venerabilis etiam Bonifacius pontifex ecclesiam sancti Michaelis nomine constructam dedicavit in summitate circi, criptatim miro opere altissime porrectam. Unde et isdem locus in summitate sui continens ecclesiam, inter nubes situs vocatur’: Ado of Vienne, Le Martyrologe d'Adon, ed. J. Dubois, Paris 1984, 336.

3 ‘In ingressu Romanae urbis quaedam est miri operis miraeque fortitudinis constituta munitio; ante cuius ianuam pons est preciosissimus super Tiberim fabricatus, qui pervius ingredientibus Romam atque egredientibus est, nec est alia nisi per eum transeundi via. Hoc tamen, nisi consensu munitionem custodientium, fieri non potest. Munitio vero ipsa, ut caetera desinam, tantae altitudinis est, ut ecclesia, quae in eius vertice videtur, in honore summi et caelestis miliciae principis archangeli Michahelis fabricata, dicatur “Sancti Angeli ecclesia usque ad caelos” ’: Liutprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, ed. P. Chiesa, CLCM clvi, Turnhout 1988, 91. Liutprand calls Marozia ‘scortum impudens satis’, that is ‘a shameless enough whore’. He despised most her numerous marriages, political machinations and seemingly insatiable lust; see pp. 89–90 which ends in a poem lamenting her depravity.

4 This omission, if Boniface iv indeed consecrated the chapel, is all the more puzzling because the Liber pontificalis highlighted this same pope's conversion of another prominent pagan monument – the Pantheon – into a site of Christian worship – the Church of St Mary and All the Martyrs, otherwise Santa Maria Rotonda: LP i. 62–3. The Liber pontificalis was first composed around 530, and additions were made sporadically thereafter to keep its tally of popes current. For the specifics concerning its composition see pp. ii–iii, xxxiv–xxxviii.

5 All biographical information concerning Ado comes from Dubois's introduction to his critical edition of the Martyrologium. Dubois, in turn, acknowledges his reliance on his mentor's work: Quentin, H., Les Martyrologes historiques, Paris 1908Google Scholar.

6 The term ‘historical martyrology’ refers to various eighth- and ninth-century compilations whose authors added under the names of each saint in the Roman liturgical calendar a brief history of their life, miracles and virtuous deeds: Aigrain, R., L'Hagiographie: ses sources, ses méthodes, son histoire, Brussels 2000, 51–68Google Scholar; cf. Dubois, J., Les Martyrologes du moyen âge latin, Turnhout 1978, 37–70Google Scholar.

7 Dubois gives detailed examples of Ado's problematic methodology: Le Martyrologe d'Adon, pp. xxi–xxiii.

8 ‘Ne putes me in hoc opere in vacuum laborasse, et rem non necessariam exsecutum fuisse, breviter tibi causam facti aperiam … Huic operi, ut dies martyrum verissime notarentur, qui confusi in Kalendis satis inveniri solent, adiuvit venerabile et perantiquum Martyrologium ab urbe Roma Aquileiam cuidam sancto episcopo a pontifice Romano directum, et mihi postmodum a quodam religioso fratre aliquot diebus praestitum. Quod ego diligenti cura transcriptum, positus apud Ravennam, in capite huius operis ponendum putavi. Passiones autem sanctorum paulo longius, maxime circa finem, Martyrologio huic insertas non mireris, cum tibi ratio superius reddita, cum factum sit, suffecerit’: ibid. p. xxv.

9 See ibid. pp. xxiii–xxvi; cf. Dubois, Les Martyrologes, 42–5. See also Aigrain, L'Hagiographie, 59–62.

10 [? L. Savio], ‘La Transformatione del Mausoleo Adriano in Castel S. Angelo’, La civiltà cattolica xvii/10 (1900), 719–26.

11 Subsequent scholars made the same assumption: F. Cabrol (ed.), ‘Hadrien – empereur’, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Paris 1925, vi/2, p. 1980.

12 Squadrilli, T., Castel Sant’ Angelo: una storia lunga diciannove secoli, Rome 2000, 72Google Scholar.

13 For a history of the litaniae maiores see J. Dyer, ‘Roman processions of the major litany from the sixth to the twelfth century’, in E. OCarragain (ed.), Roma felix: formation and reflections of medieval Rome, Burlington 2007, 112–37.

14 ‘Sed non destitit sacerdos tantus populo praedicare, ne ab oratione cessarent, donec miseratione divina pestis ipsa quiesceret. Cumque adhuc futurus antistes fugae latibula praepararet, capitur, trahitur, et ad beati Petri apostoli basilicam ducitur, ibique ad pontificalis gratiae officium consecratus, papa urbis efficitur’: Paul the Deacon, Vita Sancti Gregorii Magni, ed. S. Tuzzo, Pisa 2002, 20.

15 Paul the Deacon, however, does not include this miracle in his account. The first mention of St Gregory's angelic vision dates to the mid-thirteenth century: see n. 18 below.

16 See L. Richardson (ed.), ‘Mausoleum Hadriani’, in A new topographical dictionary of ancient Rome, Baltimore 1992, 249; cf. Krautheimer, R., Rome: profile of a city, 312–1308, Princeton 1980, 75Google Scholar. Both connect the miraculous apparition to the founding of the chapel. Squadrilli, the Civiltà cattolica, and the Dictionaire d'archeologie also support this claim.

17 Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, ed. E. Brehaut, New York 1965, 227; cf. Paul the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 15, and John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, PL lxxv.78B. The Whitby vita, composed c. 710, does not mention the procession at all.

18 I pass over their motives due to the chronological focus of this paper, although I plan to return to this topic in the near future. See Bartalomeo da Trento, Liber epilogorum in gesta sanctorum, ed. E. Paoli, Florence 2001, 119; cf. Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, ed. G. Maggioni, Florence 2007, ii. 1106. Both these accounts date from the mid-thirteenth century. No mention is made of this miracle by earlier twelfth- and thirteenth-century hagiographers, either under their entries for St Gregory or for St Michael: Jean de Mailly, Abrégés des gestes et miracles des saints, ed. A. Dondaine, Paris 1947, 152–5, 429; Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum historiale, ed. Akademische Druck, Austria 1965, 864; and Johannes Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, CLCM xli.a, ed. H. Douteil, Turnhout 1976, 233. All these sources, dating from the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, mention Gregory the Great's momentous procession through Rome, but none makes any reference to an angelic vision on the occasion.

19 Squadrilli, Castel Sant’ Angelo, 114. These frescoes no longer survive.

20 I am not the first to question the historicity of this miracle; see the anonymously authored Sancti Gregorii Papae I vita ex ejus potissimum scriptis recens adornata: ‘At quae narrantur de viso angelo et sedata peste dubiae videntur fidei. Si enim id contigit, quonam pacto Gregorius Turon. id a suo diacono non accepit? Si vero ipsum audierit tanta miracula referentem, quomodo ab ipsis commemorandis abstinuit, qui aliquando levissima nec ita certa referre delectatur? Altum est quoque de istis Bedae, Pauli, et Joannis silentium’: PL lxxv.280C.

21 Procopius, History of the wars, ed. H. Dewing, Cambridge 1968, v. 211–17.

22 Krautheimer notes that only grudgingly did Gregory, late in life, give permission to his missionaries in England ‘to reuse pagan sanctuaries as churches after destroying the idols; expediency seems to have won out over superstitious reluctance’: Rome, 72.

23 Krautheimer asserts that ‘Rome in the sixth and seventh centuries grew to be the magic center of the West. … By the time of Gregory the Great and under his successors, pilgrimages to Rome must have reached flood proportions’: ibid. 80. For a general overview see Llewellyn, P., Rome in the Dark Ages, London 1970, 173–98Google Scholar. For a briefer but more recent account see Christie, N., From Constantine to Charlemagne: an archaeology of Italy, A. D. 300–800, Burlington 2006, 157–9Google Scholar; cf. Thacker, A., ‘Rome of the martyrs: saints, cults and relics, fourth to seventh centuries’, in OCarragain, Roma felix, 13–49Google Scholar, and J. Smith, ‘Old saints, new cults: Roman relics in Carolingian Francia’, in J. Smith (ed.), Early medieval Rome and the Christian west: essays in honour of Donald A. Bullough, Boston 2000, 317–34.

24 The Liber pontificalis's entry for Leo iii recounts (ii. 188–9) that during the year 799 ‘In great joy the Romans welcomed their pastor. On the eve of St Andrew the apostle … all the scholae of foreigners – Franks, Frisians, Saxons, and Lombards – all united together and with standards and banners welcomed him at the Milvian Bridge with spiritual chants’. On these scholae see n. 51 below.

25 The map is based on P. Ermini (ed.), Christiana loca, Rome 2000, i. 20. This ‘most valuable’ bridge (discussed in Liutprand of Cremona's Antapodosis) remained the pilgrims' primary thoroughfare into the city for many centuries. Dante, alluding to the crowds in Rome for the first Jubilee-year celebration under Boniface viii, recalls how ‘Two files of naked souls walked on the bottom,/ the ones on our side faced us as they passed,/ the others moved as we did but more quickly./ The Romans, too, in the year of the Jubilee/ took measures to accommodate the throngs/ that had to come and go across the bridge:/ they fixed it so on one side all were looking/ at the castle [Hadrian's tomb], and were walking to St Peter's;/ on the other, they were moving toward the mount’: Portable Dante, ed. M. Musa, New York 1995, Inferno xviii. 25–33.

26 Dubois claims that Ado referenced Eusebius fifty-seven times, the Bible fifty-three times and the Liber pontificalis twenty times: Le Martyrologe d'Adon, p. xxi.

27 LP i. 64.

28 See Richardson, ‘Mausoleum Hadriani’, 249–51.

29 The dedication of the church on the Via Salaria on 29 September established the traditional date for St Michael's feast, still recognised today: LP i. 46; cf. Le Liber pontificalis: texte, introduction et commentaire, ed. L. Duchesne, Paris 1886, i. 268 n. 36. The spread of Michael's cult from Chonae to Gargano has been much discussed. W. von Rintelen argues that the angelic devotion passed from Phrygia to Constantinople, and from there across the Mediteranean to Gargano and central Italy: ‘Kult- und Legendenwanderung von Ost nach West im frühen Mittelalter’, Saeculum: Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte xxii (1971), 71–100. His premise has been largely accepted. See also B. Martin-Hisard, ‘Le Culte d l'archange Michel dans l'empire byzantin (viiie–xie siècles)’, in C. Carletti and G. Otranto (eds), Culto e insediamenti Micaelici nell'Italia meridionale fra tarda antichità e medioevo, Bari 1994, 351–73, and G. Otranto, ‘Il culto Micaelico del Gargano’, in P. Bouet, G. Otranto and A. Vauchez (eds), Culte et pèlerinages à saint Michel en occident, Rome 2003, 47–8. For an example of contemporary Greek diplomatic ties with Rome, consider the emperor Justinian's patronage of St Peter's basilica: LP i. 47–9.

30 If this were the case, however, the top of Hadrian's tomb would seem an odd choice; the chapel was small and relatively inaccessible compared to the larger, earlier, Roman churches dedicated to the archangel.

31 ‘Il convient d'abord que le sanctuaire de l'archange se tienne en un lieu élevé, site géographique ou chapelle d’étage à l'intérieur de l’église. Mais l'archange est également le gardien de la porte, le défenseur de la Cité de Dieu’: M. Bayle, ‘L'Architecture liée au culte de l'archange’, in Bouet, Otranto and Vauchez, Culte et pèlerinages, 450. See n. 50 below.

32 Cabrol, ‘Hadrien – Empereur’, 1980. Perhaps, but would a priest and his attendants travel to the summit daily (or even weekly) to say mass for a few soldiers? On the other hand, if there were a great number of soldiers stationed there, would a small, elevated chapel be the best means of providing for their spiritual needs?

33 For a detailed analysis of Gargano's pagan origins and Christian conversion see Arnold, J., ‘Arcadia becomes Jerusalem: angelic caverns and shrine conversion at Monte Gargano’, Speculum lxxv (2000), 567–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Wickham, C., Early medieval Italy, London 1981, 30Google Scholar.

35 See G. Spinelli, ‘Il papato e la riorganizzazione ecclesiastica della Longobardia meridionale’, in G. Andenna and G. Picasso (eds), Longobardia e longobardi nell'Italia meridionale: le instituzioni ecclesiastiche, Milan 1996, 63–4 n. 56.

36 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 200.

37 For Grimuald's rise to royal power see ibid. 206–9. For his second defence of Benevento against the Greeks see pp. 219–23.

38 Paul the Deacon noted Grimuald's respect for Michael during his reign in Pavia, recalling how the king pardoned a man suspected of treason: ‘And when the king asked what had become of Unulf, it was announced to him that he had taken refuge in the church of the blessed archangel Michael. And he presently sent to him voluntarily promising that he should suffer no harm if he would only come and trust him’: ibid. 215.

39 ‘Haec inter et Neapolitae, paganis adhuc ritibus oberrantes, Sepontinos et Beneventanos, qui 250 milibus a Seponto distant, bello lacessere’: Apparitio Sancti Michaelis in Monte Gargano, in ‘Les Sources’, in Bouet, Otranto and Vauchez, Culte et pèlerinages, 2. For the account of the battle see n. 58 below.

40 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 222. N. Everett, however, warns against completely trusting Paul's account of these events, mostly because he is, in this case, our only source: ‘The Liber de apparitione S. Michaelis in Monte Gargano and the hagiography of dispossession’, Analecta Bollandiana cxx (2002), 373–4.

41 See Otranto, ‘Il culto Micaelico’, 56–60, and his earlier, more substantial work, ‘Il “liber de apparitione”, il santuario di san Michele sul Gargano e i Longobardi del ducato di Benevento’, in M. Sordi (ed.), Sanctuari e politica nel mondo antico, Milan 1983, 223–39; cf. Everett, ‘Hagiography of dispossession,’ 373–89, where he argues that the text's composition was influenced by local politics, a dispute arising between the bishops of Siponto and Benevento concerning ownership of the shrine. He confirms Otranto's claim that a late seventh-century date of composition is most likely.

42 For an image of the coin and a brief discussion of its origins see Otranto, ‘Il culto Micaelico’, 58.

43 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 249. The Latin reads ‘Hoc facere ego non possum, quia inter contos suos sancti archangeli Michahelis, ubi ego illi iuravi, imaginem conspicio’: Storia dei Longobardi, ed. L. Capo, Milan 1992, 296; cf. P. Antonopoulos, ‘King Cunincpert and the archangel Michael’, in W. Pohl and P. Erhart (eds), Die Langobarden: Herschaft und Identität, Vienna 2005, 383–6, and The reign of Cunincpert: saga, reality, stability and progress in Lombard Italy at the end of the seventh century, Camberley 2010.

44 G. Roma, ‘Culto Micaelico e insediamenti fortificati sul territorio della Calabria settentrionale’, in Bouet, Otranto and Vauchez, Culte et pèlerinages, 507–22. J. Martin adds ‘Enfin, le sanctuaire du Gargano constitue le lieu de pélerinage chrétien le plus ancien et reste l'un des plus populaires du Midi’: ‘Le culte de saint Michel en Italie méridionale d'après les actes de la pratique (vi–xiie siècles)’, in Carletti and Otranto, Culto e insediamenti, 376.

45 Piemontese, G., I Longobardi: arte e religiosita, Bastogi 2000, 16–18, 59–67Google Scholar; cf. A. Petrucci, ‘Origine e diffusione del culto di San Michele nell'Italia medievale’, in J. Laporte (ed.), Millenaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, Paris 1971, iii. 339–52. P. Toubert, however, prudently warns scholars that, despite the Lombards' great devotion to Michael, they were not the only people to found churches in his honour at this time: Les Structures du Latium medieval: le Latium meridional et la Sabine du IXe siecle a la fin du XIIe siecle, Rome 1973, i. 309 n. 1.

46 ‘There is at the moment no evidence that a church existed on the site of S. Michele before the later seventh century, although archaeology may one day provide such evidence’: Bullough, D., ‘Urban change in early medieval Italy: the example of Pavia’, Papers of the British School at Rome xxxiv (1966), 91Google Scholar.

47 See Piemontese, I Longobardi, 24.

48 For the extensive bibliography concerned with the Lombards' remodelling of the shrine see Everett, ‘Hagiography of dispossession’, 372 n. 25.

49 ‘Autbertus … ammonitus est angelica revelatione ut in iam dicti summitate loci sancti construeret in honore archangeli aedem ut cuius caelebrabatur veneranda commemoratio in Gargani monte non minori tripudio caelebraretur in pelago’: Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis, in ‘Les Sources’, in Bonet, Otranto and Vauchez, Culte et pèlerinages, 12; cf. P. Bouet, ‘La Revelatio et les origines du culte à Saint Michel sur le Mont Tombe’, ibid. 65–90.

50 See Vallery-Radot, J., ‘Note sur les chapelles hautes dediées à Saint Michel’, Bulletin monumental clxxxviii (1929), 453–78Google Scholar; cf. David-Roy, M., ‘Chapelles hautes dediées à Saint Michel’, Archéologia cvi (1977), 49–57Google Scholar. The association of Michael with elevated spaces seems to be another uniquely western characteristic of Michael's cult, stemming from Gargano. None of the archangel's eastern churches (see n. 54 below) share this characteristic.

51 ‘Die spürbare Bemühung um eine möglichst grosse Ähnlichkeit mit dem Michaelsheiligtum auf dem Monte Gargano ist umso bemerkenswerter, als es sich bei dem Hadriansmausoleum ja nicht um eine natürliche Grotte in freier Landschaft handelt, sondern um ein spätantikes Grabmonument inmitten von Rom’: Schaller, A., Der Erzengel Michael im frühen Mittelalter, Bern 2006, 131Google Scholar.

52 The extended passage which describes the ominous happenings atop Gargano is translated below. As to the descriptor ‘inter nubes’ see Ado's account at n. 2 above.

53 ‘The Byzantine East from a very early time emphasised the archangel's healing ability. In the West, however, it was his martial qualities that made him important’: D. Callahan, ‘The cult of St Michael the Archangel and the “terrors of the year 1000”’, in R. Landes (ed.), The apocalyptic year 1000: religious expectations and social change, 950–1050, Oxford 2003, 181; cf. Peers, G., ‘Apprehending the archangel Michael: hagiographic methods’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies xx (1996), 100–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The earliest Greek account of the Chonae miracles does, however, refer repeatedly to the archangel as ‘the leader of armies’, a title probably inspired by Scripture (see n. 1 above). For a French translation of the earliest Greek account of the Chonae miracles see B. Bouvier and F. Amsler, ‘Le Miracle de l'archange Michel à Chonai: introduction, traduction, et notes’, in D. Warren (ed.), Early Christian voices in texts, traditions and symbols, Boston 2003, 395–407.

54 See Peers, G., ‘Hagiographic models of worship of images and angels’, Byzantion lxvii (1997), 407–20Google Scholar. See also Kostenec, J., ‘Observations on the great palace at Constantinople: the sanctuaries of the archangel Michael, the Daphne Palace, and the Magnaura’, Reading Medieval Studies xxxi (2005), 27–55Google Scholar.

55 ‘Ecce autem nocte ipsa quae belli precederet diem adest in visione sanctus Michael antistiti, preces dixit exauditas, spopondit se affuturum, et quarta diei hora bello premonet hostibus occurrendum. Lati ergo mane et de angelica certi victoria … obviant Christiani paganis, atque in primo belli apparatu Garganus inmenso tremore concutitur; fulgura crebra volant, et caligo tenebrosa totum montis cacumen obduxit. … Fugiunt pagani, partim ferro hostium, partim igniferis inpulsi sagittis … moenia tandem suae urbis moribundi subintrant’: Apparitio Sancti Michaelis, 2.

56 ‘Qui autem evaserant periculum, comperto quod angelus Dei in adiutorium venerat Christianis, nam et sexcentos ferme suorum fulmine videbant interemptos’: ibid.

57 ‘Ex ipso autem saxo, quo sacra contegitur aedis, ad aquilonem altaris dulcis et nimium lucida guttatim aqua delabitur, quam incolae stillam vocant … Nam et gustu suavis est et tactu salubris. Denique nonnulli post longas foebrium flammas hac hausta stilla celeri confestim refrigerio potiuntur salutis’: ibid. 4.

58 See Bouvier, ‘Le Miracle de l'archange Michel à Chonai’, 406.

59 ‘Nullus autem huc nocturno tempore est ausus ingredi, sed aurora transacta matutinos ibidem cantant ymnos’: Apparitio Sancti Michaelis, 4.

60 See Ward-Perkins, B., From classical antiquity to the Middle Ages: urban public building in northern and central Italy, AD 300–850, Oxford 1984, 203–6Google Scholar; cf. Kinney, D., ‘Spolia from the baths of Caracalla in Sta. Maria in Trastevere’, Art Bulletin lxviii (1986), 379–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Pope John iii (561–74), after hearing of the Lombards’ imminent arrival, begged the Greek commander Narses to stay and protect Italy: LP i. 62.

62 See Christie, N., The Lombards: the ancient Longobards, Oxford 1995, 183–90Google Scholar; cf. T. Brown, ‘Lombard religious policy in the late sixth and seventh centuries: the Roman dimension’, in G. Ausenda, P. Delou and C. Wickham (eds), The Langobards before the Frankish conquest: an ethnographic perspective, Woodbridge 2009, 289–99. For the Three Chapters schism and its eventual resolution at the Synod of Pavia in 698 see C. Azzara, ‘Il regno longobardo in Italia e i Tre Capitoli’, and R. Markus and C. Sotniel, ‘Epilogue’, in C. Chazelle and C. Cubitt (eds), The crisis of the Oikoumene: the Three Chapters and the failed quest for unity in the sixth-century Mediterranean, Turnhout 2007, 209–22, 277–8.

63 These laws were composed by subsequent kings between 643 and 755: The Lombard laws, ed. K. Drew, Philadelphia 1973, p. xix.

64 Ibid. 144, 160–1.

65 Ibid. 183, 199–200.

66 LP ii. 5; cf. Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 285. For a helpful narrative of Liutprand's many relations with the papacy see Hallenbeck, J., ‘Pavia and Rome: the Lombard monarchy and the papacy in the eighth century’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society lxxii (1982), 21–51Google Scholar.

67 LP ii. 13.

68 This occurred in 727/8: LP ii. 14.

69 LP ii. 4–5.

70 Zachary also consecrated a bishop for Liutprand to seal their friendly and fruitful negotiations; this occurred in 742 at the town of Terni: LP ii. 37–9.

71 Benedicti Sancti Andreae Monachi Chronicon, ed. G. Pertz, MGH, SS iii, Hanover 1839, 702; cf. Llewellyn, Rome, 199–206.

72 ‘When strangers who plan to go to Rome come to our borders, the judge shall inquire diligently whence they come. If he recognises that they come without evil intent, the judge or the gate warden shall issue a passport … After this notice has been sent to us, our agents shall give the travellers a letter to enable them to go to Rome, and when they return from Rome, the judges shall collect these letters that bear the seal of the king's ring’: Lombard laws, 224.

73 LP ii. 47–8; cf. Hallenbeck, ‘Pavia and Rome’, 51–2 n. 26.

74 See Ward-Perkins, Urban public building, 64.

75 ‘This farsighted man [Hadrian] realised many people's safety was at risk since the road was narrow and jammed on the riverbank in the portico leading to St Peter the apostle's, and there was a crush when they crossed to St Peter's prince of the apostles; so he laid a foundation of more than 12,000 blocks of tufa on the river channel's edge, and repaired the portico on a wondrous scale from the ground to its rooftop: he freshly restored this portico right to the steps of St Peter's’: LP ii. 159.

76 LP ii. 53–4, 156–7.

77 By 799 there were four major scholae: the Lombard, Frank, Frisian and Saxon: L. Bianchi notes that Charlemagne may have been welcomed into the city by the combined scholae in 774: ‘Le Scholae peregrinorum’, in Christiana loca: lo spazio cristiano nella Roma del primo millennio, Rome 2000, i. 211–15; cf. LP ii. 139. The exact origins of the Lombard schola, however, remain vague: ‘La schola dei Longobardi è quella di cui conosciamo meno’: ibid. i. 212.

78 Ward-Perkins, Urban public building, 56.

79 Ibid. 245–7. There was also an important monastery dedicated to St Michael near Vercelli, established around the year 700 and confirmed by royal decree in 707, whose monks were requested to pray day and night on behalf of the whole Lombard people: R. Balzaretti, ‘Monasteries, towns and the countryside: reciprocal relationships in the archdiocese of Milan, 614–814’, in G. Brogiolo, N. Gauthier and N. Christie (eds), Towns and their territories between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Boston 2000, 241.

80 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 295. During this incident, which occurred around the year 730, Ratchis heroically intercepted his enraged brother and future king, Aistulf (749–56) as he went to strike down Liutprand.

81 For a beautiful picture and brief description of this altar, housed in the church of San Giovanni in Friuli, see G. Bergamini and G. Menis (eds), Longobardi: the Lombards, Friuli 1991, 114.

82 Liutprand, in fact, twice stationed his armies on the city's northern border, and any potential assault on the city would have been focused upon securing the Pons Aelius, guarded by none other than Hadrian's tomb. However, Liutprand never actually attacked the city: LP ii. 14–15, 26–7.

83 ‘To judge from the surviving material evidence, it was in the first half of the eighth century that Lombard kings and aristocracy began to commission increasingly ambitious and impressive buildings’: Mitchell, J., ‘Artistic patronage and cultural strategies in Lombard Italy’, in Brogiolo, , Gauthier, and Christie, , Towns and their territories, 348Google Scholar.

84 Noble, T., ‘A new look at the Liber pontificalis’, Archivum Historiae Pontificicae xxiii (1985), 351–2Google Scholar. The string of punchy adjectives comes from this article. Richard Gyug suggests that perhaps Ado, as a Carolingian, would have written the Lombards out of the history of Castel Sant'Angelo, even if he knew that they were involved in its Christianisation.

85 This does not imply, however, that only Lombards were capable of making private donations in favour of St Michael. The primicerius Theodotus, of a long-established Roman family and uncle to Pope Hadrian i, dedicated his diaconia to the archangel in 755. This foundation was not mentioned in the Liber pontificalis, probably because it was privately funded: Coates-Stephens, R., ‘Dark Age architecture in Rome’, Papers of the British School at Rome lxv (1997), 198Google Scholar.

86 Ado chose 29 September, as did other eighth-century compilers of historical martyrologies, because this was the date assigned (by earlier martyrologies and sacramentaries) for the consecration of Michael's Roman basilica on the Via Salaria: Otranto, G., ‘Il “Liber de apparitione” e il culto di San Michele sul Gargano nella documentazione liturgica altomedievale’, Vetera Christianorum xviii (1981), 429–36Google Scholar; cf. Everett, ‘Hagiography of dispossession,’ 378–84. These articles also discuss why the appearance of Michael was instead celebrated locally on 8 May.