#longobards

this brought to you by a) divine interventions in the Iliad and b) the history of the Longobards I’m reading where good old Catholic Cunicpert is battling against Arian-heresy Alahis and, after winning, comes up with a whole propaganda story where the Archangel Michael, whom the Longobards super loved for being a warrior angel, descends on the battlefield to scare Alahis away from fighting a solo duel against Cunicpert, which in the warring tradition of the Longobards would be a huge dishonour.

In a paper published in the Journal of Anthropological Science, researchers write that the man’s limb appears to have been removed by blunt force trauma, but they aren’t sure exactly how or why. He may have undergone some sort of surgical procedure or, given the “warrior-specific culture of the Longobard people,” lost his hand in a fight. It is also possible that his limb was cut off as a form of punishment.

What is more clear, the researchers say, is that the man’s remains show signs of having been shaped by a prosthetic limb. T US 380 lived for years after his amputation, and while his injuries healed up nicely, the study authors observed that his tissue had formed callus, a thick layer of skin that develops when an area is subjected to friction. This, the researchers say, suggests there may have been a “biomechanical force” applied to the stump—a prosthesis, in other words.

it has the very similar names — just these two pages I’m on have a Cunicpert, a Liutpert, Aripert, an Ansfrit, Ansprand, a Grimoald a Raduald and a Garibald, and some of them repeat (hello Aripert II) and are sons of this and that, genealogies that I’m supposed to, presumably, learn in half a line. it also has the very understated sentences that make you think but what happened there, such as 

“Alahis rebelled against the king, [Cunicpert’s father]” → “Cunicpert, who had been in the past linked in friendship with Alahis, negotiated a reconciliation” → “In 688 [Cunicpert’s father] died, and again Alahis put himself at the head of the rebels” → “Cunicpert betrayed him and, with the aid of the clergy and of the Catholic population, soon could retake Pavia and the royal palace” → “the two hosts faced each other in a decisive battle that Cunicpert resolved to his advantage, whereas Alahis there found his death.”

Tolkien’s Aragorn is that, in that he is legitimised by his lineage and in that his identity as a Dúnadan reinforces the continuity of Gondor’s identity as the heirs of Númenor. the problem is that in this case it isn’t an artifice of historiography, because we know that it’s true in the legendarium, Aragorn is the heir of Elros who has mythological blood, and we know this because this is Tolkien’s fiction, despite however many thousands years have passed.