The Natural and the Supernatural in Book 1 of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum and Their Impact upon Lombard Identity Formation.

In book 1 of his Historia Langobardorum, composed late in the eighth century, Paul the Deacon, a Benedictine monk then at Monte Cassino, explained the origins and migrations of the Lombards, whose history from the sixth to the eighth centuries he narrated, in terms of the impact of both the natural and supernatural worlds. Beginning by locating this text within the contemporary historiographical debate over ethnogenesis, which has impacted evaluation of Paul’s purposes in writing, this essay argues that Paul had a particular interest not simply in charting the origins and migrations of the Lombards in imitation of accounts of the origins of other barbarian peoples, but more specifically in seeing Lombard success in Italy as the product of the advantages they received from climatic influences in their place of origin. This contrasts with the comments of Walter Goffart and Christopher Heath who view the significance of the natural and supernatural worlds in Paul more narrowly. For Paul, I argue, people were the product of their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]