long-term survival of the Lombard people

yofie

Banned
What's the best POD to ensure the survival of the Lombard people, who were Germanic and had made their way to Italy in the early Middle Ages, up to this day? (These are the same ones who were involved in usury in many places, just like the Jews.)
 
mate, many of the northern Italian ppl today are essentially of Lombard stock, which is why there's such a high proportion of blond(e), blue-eyed ppl up there...
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Lombards is romance speaking, their name while Germanic is Langobards.

To make their language survive, you need to make them less succesfull, the problem is that they only mad made up around 5-10% of their territoriums population. So let's say that they only succed in conquer in the Poo Valley, and it's harder hit by the Plague of Justinian and the Gothic Wars is even worse for the rural population, and the Lombards move in before the population have regained it former size, set up a lot of Langobard freehold in the empty country side, but the East Roman bribe them to keep them out of the rest of Italy.
 

Susano

Banned
Lombards is romance speaking, their name while Germanic is Langobards.

Actually, it seems in English the Germanic people are mostly called Lombards, too, but I find the distinction helpful so Ill use it, too. Anyways, your idea could work, but it would require massive population losses, and furthermore the Langobards wont be kept from Central Italy forever. It can work, but it woul require a rather specific set of conditions.

My idea is that some social mechanisms are needed to prevent the Langobards from assimilating. Of course the Langobards already did form the new nobility of the land. If this is more pronounced, than Italian is just the dastardly language of the common eople, some sort of corrupted Latin, while Langobardic is the language of the nobility and the upper classes and hence will be kept. It would be a kinda caste system, with different peoples occupying different castes.
 
So let's say that they only succed in conquer in the Poo Valley, and it's harder hit by the Plague of Justinian and the Gothic Wars is even worse for the rural population, and the Lombards move in before the population have regained it former size, set up a lot of Langobard freehold in the empty country side, but the East Roman bribe them to keep them out of the rest of Italy.

While I do agree it's quite a shitty place, is not called the Poo Valley, is the Po Plain or Pianura Padana.
And for Lagobard to survive as an etnicity it have to populate a far less extent and populated place, making a stronghold somewhere peripheric, Trentine or Friuli will be ideal, so will Savoie, Liguria or Vallè d'Aote...
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Lombards is romance speaking, their name while Germanic is Langobards.

To make their language survive, you need to make them less succesfull, the problem is that they only mad made up around 5-10% of their territoriums population.
There are some non-Tyrolean German dialects spoken by tiny communities in Italy that are commonly alleged to be Lombard/Langobard in origin, such as Mòcheno and Cimbrian, but I'm not sure how sustainable these allegations are.
 
If the Lombards remain Arians rather than converting to Catholicism, you could have a "shield of faith" type situation where they could preserve their language.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
There are some non-Tyrolean German dialects spoken by tiny communities in Italy that are commonly alleged to be Lombard/Langobard in origin, such as Mòcheno and Cimbrian, but I'm not sure how sustainable these allegations are.

According to the Genocide it's a Bavarian archaic variant from settlers in the 10th century, and most book (I have read) about the Langobards indicated that their language became extint by the 11th Century, and it was already rare by the 8th Century.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
If the Lombards remain Arians rather than converting to Catholicism, you could have a "shield of faith" type situation where they could preserve their language.

Another solution could be that, when converted to Orthodoxism/Catholism that they get their own Patriarch and Langobardic is made into a Church language like Slavonic in OTL.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
While I do agree it's quite a shitty place, is not called the Poo Valley, is the Po Plain or Pianura Padana.
And for Lagobard to survive as an etnicity it have to populate a far less extent and populated place, making a stronghold somewhere peripheric, Trentine or Friuli will be ideal, so will Savoie, Liguria or Vallè d'Aote...

Sorry about the whole Poo thing, and Friuli is quite good suggestion if they get critical mass there, they could survive, and could spread east into Slovenia and Northen Croatia in the 11-13th Century.
 
Top