Desiderius

Desiderius, also known as Daufer or Dauferius (born c. 720 – died c. 786), was king of the Lombards in Northern Italy, ruling from 756 to 774. He was dux of Tuscia prior to ascending the throne upon the death of Aistulf. He consolidated his authority by suppressing a revolt mounted by Aistulf's deposed predecessor Ratchis and by subduing the recalcitrant southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. Pursuing, in the manner of his predecessors, an expansionist policy across the Italian Peninsula, Desiderius repeatedly came into conflict with the papacy, at one point installing his own claimant to the Holy See, an antipope whose appointment collapsed within a single day. The Frankish king Charlemagne married one of Desiderius's daughters in 770, only to repudiate her the following year; this rupture, compounded by Pope Hadrian I's appeal for Frankish intervention against continued Lombard encroachment on papal territory, precipitated Charlemagne's invasion of Italy in 773. After an eight-month siege, Charlemagne captured Pavia and Desiderius himself, exiling the deposed king to the abbey of Corbie and, in an unprecedented act of dynastic absorption for a Germanic ruler, assumed the royal style of a kingdom he had subdued. Desiderius is remembered accordingly for his fateful connection to Charlemagne and for having been the last Lombard king. In Brescia, Desiderius founded the monastic church of San Salvatore, which still stands as a testament to Lombard architecture. Centuries later, he was reimagined as an emblem of failed kingship by Italian authors. For instance, in Alessandro Manzoni's tragedy Adelchi, Desiderius is portrayed as a vain ruler destroyed by his own ambition.