Arechi II, Prince Lombard, is the second founder of the city of Salerno. In the eighth century Salerno, thanks to him, becomes the city that will give life to the Salernitana Medical School and that will be called Opulenta Civitas.
734
787
Longobard prince
Arechi, Prince Lombard, is the true and new founder of the city, which already existed in Roman times, but which had fallen in decadence after the end of the empire.
The rule of the Lombards began in Italy in 568 with the conquest of Friuli, to which in a few years followed, that of the whole peninsula, especially in its internal areas. Longobards were the last “barbars” to invade Italy. Germanic population of Scandinavian origin, were nomadic warriors divided into social classes, at the head of which the warriors were.
From Cividale to Pavia, the capital, from Spoleto to Benevento, the Lombard cities for two centuries were the centers of political life of Italy. In 774 Charlemagne descended to Italy and defeated the last Lombard king, Desiderio, after having repudiated his daughter Ermengarda who had married (who remembers: “Did the soft braid spread over the breast…”? ). Northern Italy was, therefore, annexed to the reconstituted Roman Empire of the West. Down
Only Benevento and the southern part of the peninsula remained Longobarde, and here Arechi, who had married another daughter of Desiderius, laid the foundations of Langobardia Minor, as was called the southern part of Lombard rule.
Arechi decided to find a outlet to the sea, and, therefore, moved to Salerno, followed by a group of noble Longobardi, and renamed it as his new capital. He strengthened the castle built by the Byzantines, a castle still named to him, built a large palace for himself in front of the sea, and built the Palatine Chapel, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, in the place where we can still visit it today.
Arechi reigned on Salerno until 787 for almost thirty years and tried, on the one hand, to live in peace with Charlemagne, bulky neighbor of the North, and, on the other, to expand the power of the city towards the South, at the expense of the Byzantines, thus marking the policy of Salerno for the following centuries.
The Chronicon, written by an anonymous Salento in the 10th century, narrates the splendor of the palace of Arechi, and thus describes the welcome of the ambassador of Charlemagne: “At one and the other side of the staircase of the palace made some young people, holding with their hands sparrows and other like birds; distributed then, teenage paggies, of which some held with their hands too sparrows, other different birds, while other young people played among themselves at a table. Here and there he had scattered, as old people were told, and finally he had some old men in the circle with a stick and surrounded by them, in a golden throne, the prince sat.”.
Paolo Diacono, the Longobard historian who lived in his court, wrote in his honor of the verses of his wife: “You have adorned the homeland of science, constructions, regent, for which eternal will be your glory. You have been for your subjects peace, port, salvation, glory, delight, universal love”.
The Lombard principality lasted for more than three centuries, until the arrival of Roberto the Guiscardo, the Norman who finally unified the entire Mezzogiorno of Italy and laid the foundations of that kingdom which was then founded by his nephew Ruggiero.
