HISTORY PADOVA PROVINCE| FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The history of Padua after the fall of the Roman Empire follows the course of events common to most cities of north-eastern Italy. Padua suffered severely from the invasion of the Huns under Attila (452). It then passed under the Gothic kings Odoacer and Theodoric the Great. However during the Gothic War it was reconquered by the Byzantine Empire in 540. The city was seized again by the Goths under Totila, but was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narses in 568. Then it fell under the control of the Lombards. In 601, the city rose in revolt, against Agilulf, the Lombard king.

After suffering a 12-year-long and bloody siege, it was stormed and burned by him. The antiquity of Padua was seriously damaged: the remains of an amphitheatre (the Arena) and some bridge foundations are all that remain of Roman Padua today. The townspeople fled to the hills and returned to eke out a living among the ruins; the ruling class abandoned the city for the Venetian Lagoon, according to a chronicle. The city did not easily recover from this blow, and Padua was still weak when the Franks succeeded the Lombards as masters of northern Italy.

At the Diet of Aix-la-Chapelle (828), the duchy and march of Friuli, in which Padua lay, was divided into four counties, one of which took its title from the city of Padua. The end of the early Middle Ages at Padua was marked by the sack of the city by the Magyars in 899. It was many years before Padua recovered from this ravage. During the period of episcopal supremacy over the cities of northern Italy, Padua does not appear to have been either very important or very active. The general tendency of its policy throughout the war of investitures was Imperial and not Roman; and its bishops were, for the most part, Germans.

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