From the Lombards to Lombard Law – People, Kingdom, and Written Law in Italy

Abstract

The emergence of the Leges Langobardorum cannot be interpreted as the late recording of customary law carried to Italy by an unchanged Lombard people. Ancient references to the name, the Origo gentis Langobardorum, archaeological evidence from Pannonia and Italy, royal historiography, charters, and legislation have different evidentiary value and reveal a political community whose composition, religious affiliations, and forms of selfidentification changed over time. The migration of 568, the gradual consolidation of the kingdom centred on Pavia, interaction with local Italian society, and the development of Catholic kingship formed the historical setting of Rothari’s Latin Edict of 643. The legislative sequence from Rothari to Aistulf, together with royal memory, Latin literacy, and the survival of Lombard legal terminology, demonstrates that the unity of the corpus did not rest on ethnic or dogmatic immutability. It arose instead from the changing historical order of the kingdom and from successive normative layers that preserved, reinterpreted, and extended an authoritative written foundation.