Schism of The Three Chapters - The Lombard Invasion

The Lombard Invasion

By the end of the next decade, the Lombards had overrun all of northern Italy.

In 568, the patriarch of Aquileia, Paulinus, was obliged to flee, with the treasures of his church, to the little island of Grado, near Trieste, a last remnant of the Eastern Roman Empire in northern Italy and eight miles to the south of Aquileia. This political change did not affect the relations of the patriarchate with the Apostolic See; its bishops, whether in Lombard or imperial territory, stubbornly refused all invitations to a reconciliation. The Synod of Grado in 579 confirmed this position.

With the exception of the patriarch of Aquileia, these bishops and most of their suffragans were now subjects of the Lombards and beyond the reach of the Byzantine Exarch at Ravenna. As a result, they were able to maintain their dissent in support of the schism.