THE UNSPEAKABLES

Sympathetic, authentic picture of the achievements of Gregory the Great, and paralleling this record of the establishment of the temporal supremacy, a moving, tender love story of a Lombard king and his queen. Good history -- good biography -- good reading, though slow-moving in spots, this might appeal to the market that liked Blessed Are the Mk... A tale of the Lombards in the early Christian era, those ""Un speakables"" who took Italy by conquest and stayed because they loved the verdant valleys, the expensive blue skies. A pagan people, barbaric, continually harassed by the supporters of the Church of Rome, they accepted a Catholic princess as the bride of their King. Meantime, monastic Gregory has succeeded to the Papacy in order to establish the temporal supremacy of the Pope. When the Exarch of Ravonna, representative of the great emperor of the West, failed to keep the Lombards from the gates of Rome, Gregory took command, and through the intercession of the Catholic Queen, negotiated a peace treaty with the Lombards in the name of the Christian world. But the story ends on a note of treachery, as once again the Exarch incites attack on the Lombards.