Erchempert

Erchempert (also Herempert, Latin: Erchempertus) was a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Monte Cassino in the south of Italy in the final quarter of the ninth century. He chronicled a history of the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, in the Langobardia Minor, giving an especially vivid account of the violence surrounding his monastic retreat in his own day. Beginning with Duke Arechis I (591-641), his history, titled the Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum degentium (The History of the Lombards living in Benevento), stops abruptly in the winter of 888-889. Just one medieval manuscript of this text survives, from the early fourteenth century.

Sources

• Historia Langabardorvm Beneventarnorvm - the Latin text, at The Latin Library
• Ystoriola Langobardorum Beneventi degentium - the Latin text, transcribed from the Monumenta Germaniae Historica
• Erchempert's "History of the Lombards of Benevento": A translation and study of its place in the chronicle tradition - Joan Ferry's PhD thesis from Rice University, which includes an English translation of Erchempert's work