RACHIS. — King of the Lombards, formerly duke of Friuli and advocate of an understanding with the Papacy, he ascended the throne in 744, following a movement that overthrew Ildeprand, the successor and continuator of Liutprand’s policy, and to which Pope Zacharias was perhaps not entirely unrelated. As soon as he ascended the throne, R. concluded a twenty-year truce with the Byzantines, but his policies and the favors he granted to the «Romans»—he had married a Roman woman, Tassia—were disapproved by the advocates of a national policy. The laws he published in 746 reveal, together with his inability to maintain order and justice, the imminence of a revolt by the nobles and of an understanding between them and the enemies of the Kingdom.
Traditional historiography maintains that R. was induced to resume Liutprand’s aggressive policy for reasons
of domestic politics, and presents his withdrawal from the siege of Perugia in 749, following the direct intervention of Pope Zacharias, as evidence of weakness. This return to the old policy is said to have brought about a reaction by the national party, which deposed R. in order to replace him with his brother Astolf (July 749). R., having gone to Rome, received the monastic habit from Pope Zacharias and withdrew to Montecassino. Astolf’s bellicose policy plunged the Kingdom into such a grave crisis that, upon his death in 756, the Catholic-pacifist party, which had maintained secret contacts with R., is said to have brought him out of Montecassino and restored him to the throne. Pope Stephen II, in agreement with the Franks, is said to have preferred to support Duke Desiderius, who offered him the broadest promises of territorial restitutions, and to have abandoned R., who, having returned to Montecassino, ended his days there in obscurity.
More recent and perceptive studies maintain that R. sought to unify the peninsula precisely because he was imbued with Romanitas; they present his abdication and entry into Montecassino as the conclusion of an inner spiritual drama, and interpret his return as a temporary regency, demanded by the gravity of the situation. Desiderius’s initial submissiveness may have been inspired by R., who, having completed his task, returned to the monastery.