between Turin and Verona, Genoa and Milan, remained a relatively lawless state, with a mix of Arian and pagan religious practice. Bobbio became a centre of resistance to Arianism and a base for the conversion of the Lombard people. It was not until the reign of Grimoald I (663–673), himself a convert, that the bulk of the Lombards accepted Catholic Christianity. 8th century onwards Theodelinda's nephew Aripert I (653–663) restored all the lands of Bobbio that belonged by right to the pope. Aripert II confirmed this restitution to Pope John VII in 707. The Lombards soon dispossessed the popes again, but in 756 Aistulf was compelled by Pepin the Younger to give up the lands. In 774 Charlemagne made liberal grants to the abbey. In the last decades of the 9th century, Abbot Agilulph moved the monastery complex farther downstream on the left bank of the river Trebbia. The medieval village started to grow around the large monastery area. Over time, the cultural and political importance of the Abbey grew; in 1153 Frederick Barbarossa confirmed by two charters various rights and possessions. The fame of Bobbio reached the shores of Ireland, and Columbanus' reputation attracted many more Irish religious. Bobolen's successor may have been a certain 'Comgall'. Bishop Cumianus, who had resigned his see in Ireland to become a monk of Bobbio, died in the abbey in about 736, as his poetic inscription there attests. See of Bobbio In 1014, the Emperor Henry II, on the occasion of his own coronation in Rome, obtained from Pope Benedict VIII the erection of Bobbio as an episcopal see. The diocese was made a suffragan of the metropolitan of Milan. Peter Aldus, its first bishop, had been abbot of Bobbio since 999, and his episcopal successors for a long time lived in the abbey, where many of them had been monks. From 1133 Bobbio was a suffragan see of the archdiocese of Genoa. From time to time disputes arose between the bishop and the monks, and in 1199 Pope Innocent III issued two bulls, restoring the abbey in spirituals and temporals, and empowering the bishop to depose an abbot if within a certain time he did not obey. Dissolution Saint Columbanus' abbey and church were taken from the Benedictines by the French occupying forces in 1803, when the abbey was suppressed. Basilica The current Basilica of San Colombano was built during 1456–1530 in