Authari married Theodelinda, the daughter of Garibald, duke of Bavaria, a pious Christian and a Catholic, whose coming seems to have led the wild Lombards to Christianity, much as the influence of queen Bertha worked on the Jutes of Kent. She had not been long wedded to him when he died; the Lombard _witan_, who had formed a high idea of her wisdom and virtue, consulted her as to the choice of a new king. She recommended to them Agilulf, duke of Turin, a cousin of Authari. To him she gave her hand, and he was at the same time raised on the shield at Milan as king of the Lombards (590). Agilulf was led by his wife’s persuasion to be baptized, and ere long the greater part of the nation followed his example. The majority of the Lombards, like most of the other Teutonic races, adopted Arianism, and only conformed to orthodoxy in the seventh century. It was Agilulf and Theodelinda who built the famous Basilica of Monza, where the iron crown of Lombardy is even now preserved. In its sacristy are still shown many relics of the pious queen; most curious among them is a hen and chickens of gold of the most quaint and archaic workmanship, a marvellous example of the earliest art of a Teutonic people just emerging from barbarism. With it is preserved the crown of Agilulf, which he dedicated to St. John, and which bears the inscription: AGILULF GRATIA DEI VIR GLORIOSUS REX TOTIUS ITALIAE OFFERT SANCTO IOHANNI BAPTISTAE IN ECCLESIA MODICIAE. The first three kings of the Lombards had been short-lived, but Agilulf survived for the respectable term of twenty-five years (591-616), and reigned long enough to see his son grow up and become his colleague on the throne. More fortunate than his predecessor Authari, he was delivered from the danger of Frankish invasions by the series of wars between the sons of Brunhildis and Fredegundis, which broke out in 593, and afterwards by the home troubles of Austrasia and Burgundy, caused by the strife between Brunhildis and the great nobles. [Sidenote: Conquests of Agilulf.] Agilulf was, therefore, enabled to lop away from the empire several of the detached districts which had hitherto adhered to it. For the greater part of his reign he was in constant war with the Romans, and stripped the exarchs of Sutrium, Orte, Tuder, Perugia, and other south-Tuscan and Umbrian towns (598). By the mediation of Pope Gregory the Great a treaty was, for the first time, concluded between the Lombards and the empire in 599, but the exarch Gallicinus broke the peace, by seizing the person of Agilulf’s daughter as she chanced to be passing through imperial territory. This second Lombard war, which fell into the reign of Phocas, proved most disastrous for the Romans. Agilulf began by capturing Padua, the great fortress of the Venetian marshes (602). The fall of Padua cut off Mantua from succour, and that city, the last stronghold of the empire in the interior of Lombardy, also fell in 602.