RATCHIS. - King of the Lombards, formerly duke of Friuli, a supporter of an understanding with the Papacy, he ascended the throne in 744, following a movement that overthrew Hildeprand, the successor and continuer of Liutprand's policy, and in which Pope Zachary was perhaps not entirely uninvolved. As soon as he ascended the throne, R. concluded a twenty-year truce with the Byzantines, but his directives and the favors he granted to the "Romans" — he had married a Roman woman, Tassia — were disapproved of by the supporters of a national policy. The laws he published in 746 reveal, together with the inability to maintain order and justice, the imminence of a revolt of the great nobles and of an understanding between them and the enemies of the Kingdom.
Traditional historiography asserts that R. was induced to resume Liutprand's aggressive policy by reasons of internal politics and presents as a proof of weakness his withdrawal in 749 from the siege of Perugia, owing to the direct intervention of Pope Zachary. This return to the old policy would have determined the reaction of the national party, which would have deposed R. and replaced him with his brother Aistulf (July 749). R., having gone to Rome, received the monastic habit from Pope Zachary and retired to Montecassino. Aistulf's warmongering policy plunged the Kingdom into so grave a crisis that, upon his death in 756, the Catholic-pacifist party, which had maintained secret understandings with R., would have taken him from Montecassino and restored him to the throne. Pope Stephen II, in agreement with the Franks, would have preferred to support Duke Desiderius, who made him the broadest promises of territorial restitutions, and would have abandoned R., who, having returned to Montecassino, ended his days there obscurely.
More recent and acute studies assert that R. set out to unify the peninsula precisely because he was imbued with Romanitas, present his descent from the throne and his entry into Montecassino as the conclusion of an intimate spiritual drama, and interpret his return as a temporary regency, required by the gravity of the situation. Desiderius's initial compliance may have been inspired by R., who, his task completed, returned to the monastery.
Bibliography3 works
Gina Fasoli