PAULUS DIACONUS, or WARNEFRIDI, or CASI NENSIS (c. 720–c. 800), the historian of the Lombards, belonged to a noble Lombard family and flourished in the 8th century. An ancestor named Leupichis entered Italy in the train of Alboin and received lands at or near Forum Iulii (Friuli). During an invasion the Avars swept off the five sons of this warrior into Illyria, but one, his namesake, returned to Italy and restored the ruined for tunes of his house. The grandson of the younger Leupichis was Warnefrid, who by his wife Theodelinda became the father of Paulus. Born between 72o and 725, Paulus received an excep tionally good education, probably at the court of the Lombard king Ratchis in Pavia, learning from a teacher named Flavian the rudiments of Greek. It is probable that he was secretary to the Lombard king Desiderius, the successor of Ratchis; it is certain that this king's daughter Adelperga was his pupil. After Adel perga had married Arichis, duke of Benevento, Paulus at her request wrote his continuation of Eutropius. It is possible that he took refuge at Benevento when Pavia was taken by Charlemagne in 774, but it is much more likely that his residence there was anterior to this event by several years. Soon he entered a mon astery on the lake of Como, and before 782 he had become an inmate of the great Benedictine house of Monte Cassino, where he made the acquaintance of Charlemagne. About 776 his brother Arichis had been carried as a prisoner to France, and when five years later the Frankish king visited Rome, Paulus successfully wrote to him on behalf of the captive. His literary attainments attracted the notice of Charlemagne, and Paulus became a potent factor in the Carolingian renaissance. In 787 he returned to Italy, where he died between 794 and Soo.
The chief work of Paulus is his Historia gentis Langobardorum. This incomplete history in six books was written after 787 and deals with the story of the Lombards from 568 to the death of King Liutprand in 747. The story is told from the point of view
of a Lombard patriot and is especially valuable for the relations between the Franks and the Lombards. Paulus used the document called the Origo gentis Langobardorum, the Liber pontificalis, the lost history of Secundus of Trent, and the lost annals of Bene vento; he made a free use of Bede, Gregory of Tours and Isidore of Seville. His Historia romana continues the Breviarium of Eutropius from 364 to 553.
Paulus wrote at the request of Angilram, bishop of Metz (d. 791), a history of the bishops of Metz to 766, the first work of its kind north of the Alps. This Gesta episcoporum mettensium is published in Bd. ii. of the Monumenta Germaniae historica Scrip tores, and has been translated into German (Leipzig, 188o). He also wrote many letters, verses and epitaphs : see Karl Neff, Die Gedichte des Paulus Diaconus (Munich, 1908).
Of the Historic' there are about a hundred manuscripts extant. It was largely used by subsequent writers, was often continued, and was first printed in Paris in 1514. It has been translated into English, German, French and Italian, the English translation being by W. D. Foulke (Philadelphia, 1807), and the German by 0. Abel and R. Jacobi (Leipzig, 1878). Among the editions of the Latin the best is that edited by L. Bethmann and G. Waltz, in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores rerum langobardicarum (Hanover, 1878). The Historia romana was edited by H. Droysen and published in the Monumenta Germaniae historica, Auctores antiquissimi, Bd. ii. (1879).
See C. Cipolla, Note bibliografiche circa l'odierna condizime degli studi critici sul testo delle opere di Paolo Diacono (Venice, 19o1). PAUMOTU (TUAMOTU or LOW ARCHIPELAGO): see PACIFIC ISLANDS.