510 APPENDIX were too lazy or too discreet to relate historical events they used to fall back on the entries in the registers of their office. [L. Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis ; Texte, Introduction et Conimentaire, t. 1 (1886).] The Letters of Pope Gregory the Great (for whose life and work see above, p. 33 sqq.) are the chief contemporary source for the state of Ital}- at the end of the si.xth century. The Benedictines of St. Maur published in 1705 a complete collection of the Pope's correspondence, which extends from a.d. 591 to 604. This edition, used and quoted by Gibbon, is reprinted in Migne's Patr. Graeca, Ixxvii. The arrangement of the letters in this collection was adopted without full intelli- gence as to the nature of the materials which were used. It depended mainly on a Vatican ]SIs. containing a collection of the letters, put together in the iifteenth century by the order of an archbishop of Milan (John IV.). This collection was compiled from three distinct earlier collections, which had never been put together before to form a single collection. Of these (1) the most important is a selection of 681 letters, made under Pope Hadrian I. towards the end of the eighth century. The letters of Gregory range over fourteen indictions, and the " Hadrianic Regis- ter," as it is called, falls into fourteen Books, according to the indictions. This is our basis of chronology. There is (2) a second collection of 200 letters without dates (except in one case), of which more than a quarter are common to the Hadrianic Re- gister. It has been proved that all these letters belong to a single j-ear (a.d. 598-9) ; but in the text of the Benedictines they are scattered over all the j-ears. (3) The third collection (Collectio Pauli) is smaller ; it contained 53 letters, of which 21 are peculiar to itself. Here too, though the Benedictine edition distributes these letters over six years, it hasbeen proved that they all belong to three particular years. These results were reached by verj' long and laborious research by Paul Ewald, whose article in the Ncues Archiv of 1878 (iii. 433 sg?.) has revolutionised the study of Gregorj-'s correspondence and established the order of the letters. A new critical edition, based on Ewald's researches, has appeared in the Monumenta Germ. Historica, in two vols. Only Bks. 1-4 are the work of Ewald ; but on his premature death the work was continued by L. M. Hartmann. Ewald also threw new light on the biographies of Gregory, proving that the oldest was one pre- served in a St. Gall Ms. (and known to, but not used bj^ Canisius). See his article : Die alteste Biographie Gregors I. (in ' ' Historische Aufsatze dem Anden- ken an G. Waitz gewidmet"), 1886. For the Life by Paulus Diac. cp. above, p. 33, note 73 ; for the Life by John Diac. cp. p. 34, n. 74. [Monographs : G. T. Lau, Gregor I. der Grosse nach seinem Lebenimd seiner Lehregeschildert (1845) ; W. Wisbaum, Die wichtigsten Richtungen und Ziele der Thatigkeit des Papstes Gregor des Gr. (1884); C. Wolfsgruber, die VorpapstlicheLeliensperiode Gregors des Gr., nach seineu Briefen dargestellt (1886) and Gregor der Grosse (1890) ; Th. WoUschack, Die Verhaltnisse Italiens, insbesondere des Langobardenreichs nach dem Brief wechsel Gregors I. (1888) ; F. W. Kellett, Pope Gregory the Great and his relations with Gaul (1889). There is a full account of Gregory's life and work in Hodgkin's Italy and her Invaders, vol. v. chap. 7; and a clear summary of Ewald's arguments as to the correspondence.] The earliest historian of the Lombards was a bishop of Trient named Secundus, who died in a.d. 612. He wrote a slight work (historiola) on the Gesta of the Lombards, coming down to his own time ; unluckily it is lost. But it was used by our chief authority on the history of the Lombard kingdom, Paul the Deacon, son of Warnefrid ; who did for the Lombards what Gregory of Tours did for the Merovingians, Bede for the Anglo-Saxons, Jordanes for the Goths. Paul was born about a.d. 725 in the duchy of Friuli. In the reign of King Ratchis (a.d. 744-9) he was at Pavia, and in the palace-hall he saw in the king's hand the bowl made of Cunimund's skull. He followed King Ratchis into monastic retirement at Monte Cassino, and we find him there an intimate friend and adviser of Arichis, Duke of Beneventum, and his wife. He guided the historical studies of this lady, Adelperga, and it was her interest in history that stimulated him to
