Columbanus, Bobbio and Lombard Identity between the sixth and seventh Centuries

The essay considers the controversial issue of the identity of the Lombards. Some scholars assert that those barbarian people who entered Italy in AD 568 had no sense of belonging to a specific and distinct culture. Guided by Carlo Tullio-Altan's anthropological consideration of identity, the present study applies the conceps of epos, ethos, logos, genos and topos to the Lombards in order to assess whether, over time, barbarian groups under that name realised a particular sense of collective identity. It is apparent that awareness of speaking a specific language (logos) was relevant to the consciousness of belonging to a Germanic-speaking group. Lombards were also connected to Germanic culture according to the remaining rubrics of identity, above all the concept of genos, with which Columbanus had to grapple when he arrived in Italy, from Raetia.