Helmichis

Background

The oldest author to write about Helmichis is the contemporary chronicler Marius of Avenches. In his account he mentions that "Alboin was killed by his followers, that is Hilmaegis with the rest, his wife agreeing to it". Marius continues by adding that, after killing the king, Helmichis married his widow and tried unsuccessfully to gain the throne. His attempt failed and he was forced to escape together with his wife, the royal treasure and the troops that had sided with him in the coup. This account has strong similarities with what is told in the Origo. The Origo would in its turn become a direct source for the Historia Langobardorum.

The background to the assassination begins when Alboin, king of the Lombards, a Germanic people living in Pannonia (in the region of modern Hungary), went to war against the neighbouring Gepids in 567. In a decisive battle, Alboin killed the Gepid king Cunimund and captured the king's daughter Rosamund – later marrying her to guarantee the loyalty of the surviving Gepids. The following year, the Lombards migrated to Italy, a territory then held by the Byzantine Empire. In 569 Alboin took Mediolanum (Milan), the capital of northern Italy, and by 570 he had assumed control of most of northern Italy. The Byzantine forces entrenched themselves in the strategic town of Ticinum (Pavia), which they took only after a long siege. Even before taking Ticinum, the Lombards crossed the Apennines and invaded Tuscia. After the fall of Ticinum, Alboin chose Verona as his first permanent headquarters. In this town Alboin was assassinated in 572 and it is in these circumstances that Helmichis' name is first heard of. Most of the available details are in the Historia Langobardorum.

Assassination

By settling himself in Verona and temporarily interrupting his chain of conquests, Alboin had weakened his popular standing as a charismatic warrior king. The first to take advantage of this was Rosamund, who could count on the support of the Gepid warriors in the town in her search for an opportunity to avenge the death of her father. To obtain this goal she persuaded Helmichis, spatharius (arms bearer) and foster brother of the king, and also head of a personal armed retinue in Verona, to take part in a plot to eliminate Alboin and replace him on the throne. Helmichis persuaded Rosamund to involve Peredeo, described by Paul simply as "a very strong man", who was seduced through a trick by the Queen and forced to consent to become the actual assassin.

This story is partly in conflict with what is told by the Origo, which has Peredeo acting as an instigator and not as the murderer. In a similar vein to the Origo is the account of Peredeo contained in the Historia Langobardorum Codicis Gothani, where it is added that Peredeo was Alboin's "chamber-guard", hinting that in the original version of the story Peredeo's role may just have been to let in the real assassin, who is Helmichis in Agnellus' account, as it had been in that of Marius. However, the primary intent of the Historia Langobardorum Codicis Gothani may have been to obtain a more straightforward and coherent narrative by reducing the number of actors in the story, beginning with Peredeo. The disappearance of Peredeo, however, means that the role of Helmichis changes: while Paul presents him as "the efficient conspirator and killer", with Agnellus he is a victim of a ruthless and domineering queen.

According to historian Paolo Delogu it may be that Agnellus' narrative better reflects Lombard oral tradition than Paul's. In his interpretation, Paul's narrative represents a late distortion of the Germanic myths and rituals contained in the oral tradition. In a telling consistent with Germanic tradition, it would be Helmichis who was seduced by the queen, and by sleeping with him Rosamund would pass Alboin's royal charisma magically to the king's prospective murderer. A symbol of this passage of powers is found in Paul's account of the assassin's entry: Alboin's inability to draw his sword represents here his loss of power.

After the king's death on June 28, 572, Helmichis married Rosamund and claimed the Lombard throne in Verona. The marriage was important for Helmichis: it legitimized his rule because, judging from Lombard history, royal prerogatives could be inherited by marrying the king's widow; and the marriage was a guarantee for Helmichis of the loyalty of the Gepids in the army, who sided with the queen since she was Cunimund's daughter.

Failure

Behind the coup were almost certainly the Byzantines, who had every interest in removing a dangerous enemy and replacing him with somebody, if not from a pro-Byzantine faction, at least less actively aggressive. Gian Piero Bognetti advances a few hypotheses about Helmichis' motivation for his coup: his reason could have involved a family link to the Lethings, the Lombard royal dynasty that had been dispossessed by Alboin's father Audoin; or he may have been related through Amalafrid to the Amali, the leading dynasty of the Goths. Helmichis easily obtained the support of the Lombards in Verona, and he probably hoped to sway all the warriors and Lombard dukes to his side by having Alboin's only child, Albsuinda, under his control. He may also have hoped for Byzantine help in buying the dukes' loyalty economically.

Helmichis' coup ultimately failed because it met strong opposition from the many Lombards who wanted to continue the war against the Byzantines and to confront the regicides. Faced with the prospect of going to war at overwhelming odds, Helmichis asked for help from the Byzantines. The praetorian prefect Longinus enabled him to avoid a land route possibly held by hostile forces, by shipping him instead down the Po to Byzantine-held Ravenna, together with his wife, his Lombard and Gepid troops, the royal treasure and Albsuinda. Bognetti believes that Longinus may have planned to make the Lombards weaker by depriving them of any legitimate heir. In addition, because of the ongoing war, it was hard to assemble all the warriors to elect a new king formally. This plan was brought to nothing by the troops stationed in Ticinum, who elected their duke Cleph king, having it in mind to continue Alboin's aggressive policy. In contrast, Wolfram argues that Cleph was elected in Ticinum while Helmichis was still making his bid for the crown in Verona.

Death

Once in Ravenna, Helmichis and Rosamund rapidly became estranged. According to Paul, Longinus persuaded Rosamund to get rid of her husband so that he could marry her. To accomplish this, she made him drink a cup full of poison; before dying, however, Helmichis understood what his wife had done and forced her to drink the cup too, so they both died. According to Wolfram, there may be some historical truth in the account of Longinus' proposal to Rosamund, as it was possible to achieve Lombard kingship by marrying the queen, but the story of the two lovers' end is not historical but legendary. The mutual murder as told by Agnellus is given a different interpretation by Joaquin Martinez Pizarro: he sees Helmichis' last action as a symbol of how the natural hierarchy of sexes is at last restored, after the queen's actions had unnaturally modified the proper equilibrium.

At this point, Longinus sent the royal treasure and Albsuinda to Constantinople, the Empire's capital, together with Helmichis' forces, which were to become Byzantine mercenaries. This was a common Byzantine strategy, already applied previously to the Ostrogoths, by which large national contingents were relocated to be used in other theatres. These are believed to be the same 60,000 Lombards that are attested by John of Ephesus as being active in Syria in 575 against the Persians. As for Albsuinda, the Byzantine diplomacy probably aimed to use her as a political tool to impose a pro-Byzantine king on the Lombards. According to Agnellus, once Longinus' actions came to the attention of emperor Justin II they were greatly praised, and the emperor gave lavish gifts to his official.

Cleph kept his throne for only 18 months before being assassinated by a slave. An important success for the Byzantines was that no king was proclaimed to succeed him, opening a decade of interregnum and making the Lombards who remained in Italy more vulnerable to attacks from Franks and Byzantines. It was only when faced with the danger of annihilation by the Franks in 584 that the Lombard dukes elected a new king in the person of Authari, son of Cleph, who began the definitive consolidation and centralization of the Lombard kingdom.