Duchy of Benevento

Main article: Duchy of Benevento

Not long after it had been sacked by Totila and its walls razed (545), Benevento became the seat of a powerful Lombard duchy.^[2] The circumstances of the creation of duchy of Benevento are disputed. Lombards were present in southern Italy well before the complete conquest of the Po Valley: the duchy would have been founded in 576 by some soldiers led by a Zotto, autonomously from the Lombard king.

The Principality of Benevento as it appeared in 1000 AD.

Zotto's successor was Arechis I (died in 640), from the Duchy of Friuli, who captured Capua and Crotone, sacked the Byzantine Amalfi but was unable to capture Naples. After his reign the Eastern Roman Empire had left in southern Italy only Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta, Sorrento, the tip of Calabria and the maritime cities of Apulia.
In the following decades, Benevento conquered some territories to the Roman-Byzantine duchy, but the main enemies was now the northern Lombard reign itself. King Liutprand intervened in several times imposing a candidate of his own to the duchy's succession; his successor Ratchis declared the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento foreign countries where it was forbidden to travel without a royal permission.
With the collapse of the Lombard kingdom in 773, Duke Arechis II was elevated to Prince under the new empire of the Franks, in compensation for having some of his territory transferred back to the Papal States. Benevento was acclaimed by a chronicler as a "second Pavia"— Ticinum geminum— after the Lombard capital was lost. The unit of this principality was short-lived: in 851, Salerno broke off under Siconulf and, by the end of that century, Capua was independent as well. Benevento was ruled again by Byzantines between 891-895.
The so-called Langobardia minor was unified for the last time by Duke Pandolfo Testa di Ferro, who expanded his extensive control in the Mezzogiorno from his base in Benevento and Capua. Before his death (March 981), he had gained from Emperor Otto I the title of Duke of Spoleto also. However, both Benevento and Salerno rebelled to his son and heir, Pandulf II.
The first decades of the 11th century saw two more German-descended rulers to southern Italy: Henry II, conquered in 1022 both Capua and Benevento, but returned after the failed siege of Troia. Similar results obtained Conrad II in 1038. In these years the three states (Benevento, Capua, and Salerno) were often engaged in local wars and disputes that favoured the rise of the Normans from mercenaries to ruler of the whole southern Italy. The greatest of them was Robert Guiscard, who captured Benevento in 1053 after the Emperor Henry III had first authorised its conquest in 1047 when Pandulf III and Landulf VI shut the gates to him. These princes were later expelled from the city and then recalled after the pope failed to defend it from Guiscard. The city fell to Normans in 1077. It was a papal city until after 1081.

Papal rule

Papal Benevento in the 18th century.

Benevento passed to the Papacy peacefully when the emperor Henry III ceded it to Leo IX, in exchange for the Bishopric of Bamberg (1053). Landulf II, Archbishop of Benevento, promoted reform, but also allied with the Normans. He was deposed for two years. Benevento was the cornerstone of the Papacy's temporal powers in southern Italy. The Papacy ruled it by appointed rectors, seated in a palace, and the principality continued to be a papal possession until 1806, when Napoleon granted it to his minister Talleyrand with the title of Sovereign Prince. Talleyrand was never to settle down and actually rule his new principality; in 1815 Benevento was returned to the papacy. It was united with Italy in 1860.^[2]
Manfred of Sicily lost his life in 1266 in battle with Charles of Anjou not far from the town, in the course of the Battle of Benevento.^[2]