[Illustration: LOMBARD ARCH ON THE CHURCH OF S. AGATA]
Gothic rule was short. Infinite and hurried changes follow on this period. We next hear of the city in the hands of the Lombards. The Lombard occupation is almost as dark as the Gothic.[5] In 592, Perugia became a Lombard Duchy ruled by the Duke Mauritius, who turned traitor to his trust and delivered the city to the Exarch of Ravenna. The news of the Duke's treachery spread northward. Agilulf, King of the Lombards, came hastening down to recapture the city with a mighty army, and he made Mauritius pay for his treachery with his head. This was in 593. A few years later Perugia was restored to the Empire, but at the beginning of 700, she, like many other cities of Italy, attempted to shake herself free from Byzantine rule. It is probable that she did not really succeed in doing so, but this point is at any rate a great crisis in her history, for it is the first time that we find her at all tangibly connected with the Head of the Christian world--with that power of the Church which was to prove, throughout her future, alternately her safeguard and her scourge.
It was about 727 that Leo the Isaurian, Emperor of the East, terrified by certain evils in his kingdom which he took to be signs of Divine anger, made his famous decree against the worship of images. This proved of course a most unpopular edict in Italy, and the reigning Pope opposed it by every means in his power. Many of the most powerful cities joined him, amongst them Perugia, and Greek rule in Italy, already on the wane, was greatly weakened, but we do not hear of any settled breach with the Empire for many years to come. Perugia was, as we shall see, merely advancing towards her own liberation, but the acquired protection of the Popes proved useful to her in her next great crisis.
In 749 Ratchis, King of the Lombards, laid siege to the city, and her fall seemed inevitable. Then, in the moment of her great need, with the Lombard army beating in her very doors, the reigning Pope, S. Zacharias the Greek, accompanied by all his clergy, and by many of the Roman nobles, arrived at her gates, and in words of extraordinary sweetness pleaded her cause with Ratchis. We do not hear what phrases the old man may have used to check a man on the verge of a great victory. We only hear that the Lombard king knelt down and kissed the feet of the Pope. "Thou hast conquered me," he said, very simply, and then he withdrew from the battle, and S. Zacharias passed into the city, and was received with universal joy by her citizens. And not only did Ratchis abandon the siege of a town which he so greatly coveted, but, his whole soul being moved by this new power, he renounced his kingdom and his crown and retired to the monastery Monte Cassino, where he became a monk, living there until he died.