At a time of crisis in his pontificate, in the summer of 595, Gregory lamented the ‘daily growing oppression of my land (terrae meae)’, At that moment several things, as we have seen in the last chapter, darkened his horizon. Among his worries the Lombards' activities in Italy were the most acute; and the friction between Gregory and the emperor and the conflict with the imperial administration were in large part rooted in the divergence of their views as to how the Lombard threat was to be met.

At the time of their invasion of Italy in 568 the Lombards had long been in contact with the Empire. They had entered the orbit of Justinian's foreign policy while settled in Pannonia, with the Gepids as their neighbours. In 568 they moved into Italy, from the North-East. Most of Venetia and Istria and of the area of the Po plain was easily conquered. ‘Dukes’ were left in charge of the conquered cities and regions; dukes were also established, perhaps through Byzantine agency, further South, at Spoleto and at Benevento. In the 570s and 580s Byzantine diplomacy sought to weaken the Lombards, by alliance with Frankish kings whose armies were abortively mobilised against them, as well as by bribery, and by trying to subvert royal authority. But by 590 a Lombard kingdom had become firmly established over the dukes in the North. The areas around Spoleto and around Benevento survived with more independence from the king, under their own dukes.