t churches in Italy which are not
antique, which were built by them, and by the palaces erected for
Theoderic, King of Italy, at Ravenna, Pavia, and Modena, though the
style is barbarous and rather rich and grand than well conceived or
really good. The same may be said of S. Stefano at Rimini and of S.
Martino at Ravenna, of the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista in the
same city built by Galla Placida about the year of grace 438, of S.
Vitale which was built in the year 547, and of the abbey of Classi di
fuori, and indeed of many other monasteries and churches built after
the time of the Lombards. All these buildings, as I have said, are
great and magnificent, but the architecture is very rude. Among them
are many abbeys in France built to S. Benedict and the church and
monastery of Monte Casino, the church of S. Giovanni Battista built
by that Theodelinda, Queen of the Goths, to whom S. Gregory the Pope
wrote his dialogues. In this place that queen caused the history of
the Lombards to be painted. We thus see that they shaved the backs of
their heads, and wore tufts in front, and were dyed to the chin.
Their clothes were of broad linen, like those worn by the Angles and
Saxons, and they wore a mantle of divers colours; their shoes were
open to the toes and bound above with small leather straps. Similar
to the churches enumerated above were the church of S. Giovanni,
Pavia, built by Gundiperga, daughter of Theodelinda, and the church
of S. Salvatore in the same city, built by Aribert, the brother of
the same queen, who succeeded Rodoaldo, husband of Gundiberta, in the
government; the church of S. Ambruogio at Pavia, built by Grimoald,
King of the Lombards, who drove from the kingdom Aribert's son
Perterit. This Perterit being restored to his throne after
Grimoald's death built a nunnery at Pavia called the Monasterio
Nuovo, in honour of Our Lady and of St Agatha, and the queen built
another dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Pertica outside the walls.
Cunibert, Perterit's son, likewise built a monastery and church to St
George called di Coronato, in a similar style, on the spot where he
had won a great victory over Alahi. Not unlike these was the church
which the Lombard king Luit-prand, who lived in the time of King
Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, built at Pavia, called S. Piero, in
Cieldauro, or that which Desiderius, who succeeded Astolf, built to
S. Piero Clivate in the diocese of Milan; or the monastery of S.
Vincen