History of the Langobards Author:Paul General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1906 Original Publisher: Dept. of History, University of Pennsylvania Subjects: Lombards Italy Lombardy (Italy) Lombardy History / Europe / Italy Travel / Europe / Italy Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and ther... more »e may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: BOOK'III. Chapter I. Some of the dukes of the Langobards then, with a strong army invaded Gaul.1 Hospitius, a man of God, who had been cloistered at Nicea (Nice), foresaw their invasion a long while beforehand, by revelation of the Holy Spirit, and predicted to the citizens of that city what calamities were impending. For he was a man of the greatest abstinence and of praiseworthy life, who, bound by iron chains upon his flesh and clad with goat's hair, used bread alone and a few dates for his food. But in the days of Lent he was nourished by the roots of Egyptian herbs which hermits use, the gift of some merchants. The Lord deemed it fitting that great and excellent things should be accomplished by him, which are written in the books of the reverend man Gregory, bishop of Tours. This holy man then, predicted the coming of the Langobards into Gaul in this manner: " The Langobards," he says, " will come into Gaul and will lay waste seven cities because their wickedness has waxed great in the sight of the Lord, for all the people are addicted to perjuries, guilty of thefts, intent upon plunder, 1 An invasion of Gaul, probably a mere foray, is mentioned by Marius of Avenches as having occurred in 569, immediately after Alboin's invasion of Italy. It was evidently a failure, for it was stated that many Langobard captives were sold into slavery (Pabst, 410, note 2). The particular invasion mentioned in the text occurred not earlier than ...« less