Thuringii
| Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R) |
Thuringii, Toringi or Teuriochaimai,[1] were an early Germanic people[2] that appeared during the late Migration Period in the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thuringia.
This people was called Thervingi in the third and fourth centuries, and became known as Thuringii around the early fifth century. It became a kingdom, which came into conflict with the Merovingian Franks, and it later came under their influence and Frankish control. The name is still used for one of modern Germany's federal states (Bundesländer).
First appearances Image from "Battle of Hermunduri and Chatti", 1717
The Thuringians do not appear in classical Roman texts under that name, but some have suggested that they were the remnants of the Suebic Hermanduri, the last part of whose name (-duri) could represent the same sound as (-thuri) and the Germanic suffix -ing, suggests a meaning of "descendants of (the [Herman]duri)".[3] This people were living near the Marcomanni. Tacitus in his "Germania", describes their homeland as being where the Elbe starts, but also having colonies at the Danube and even within the Roman province of Rhaetia.
Claudius Ptolemy mentions neither the Hermunduri nor the Thuringians in his geography but instead the Teuriochaemae (Turones, see list of ancient Germanic peoples and tribes), living in just north of the Sudetes mountains, thought to be the Erzgebirge. These may also be connected to later Thuringians. ("Chaemae" may represent a version of the Germanic word for "home". Ptolemy also mentions a people called the Bainochaimai to the west of the Elbe. He also apparently spells the name of the Chamavi in a similar way.) The formation of this people may have had also been influenced by two longer-known tribes more associated with the eastern bank of the lower Elbe river, northeast of Thuringia, because the Carolingian law code written for them was called the "law of the Angles and Varini that is the Thuringians". Much earlier, Tacitus in his "Germania", for example, had grouped these two tribes among the more distant Suebic tribes, living beyond the Elbe, and near a sea where they worshiped Herthus. (Pliny the Elder had listed the Varini as a Vandalic, or East Germanic tribe, rather than Suebian.) These two tribes are among Germanic groups known to have been found north of the Danube in this period. Procopius in his "Gothic Wars" describes the land of the Varini as being south of the Danes, but north of the Slavs, who were in turn north of the uncultivated lands which lay north of the Danube. Procopius describes a marriage alliance between the Angles of Britain and the Varni in the sixth century.[4]
The name of the Thuringians appears to be first mentioned in the veterinary treatise of Vegetius, written early in the fifth century.[5]
They appear in some lists of the peoples involved in Attila's invasion of Gaul.[6] Walter Pohl has also proposed that they may be the same as the Turcilingi (or Torcolingi) who were one of the tribes near the middle Danube after the collapse of the empire of Attila, to whom they had apparently all been subject. They are specifically associated with Odoacer, who later became King of Italy, and are sometimes thought to have formed a part of the Sciri. Other tribes in this region at the time included the Rugii and the Heruls. Sidonius Apollinaris, in his seventh poem, explicitly lists them among the allies who fought under Attila when he entered Gaul in 451. During the reign of Childeric I, Gregory of Tours and Fredegar record that the Frankish King married the runaway wife of the King of the Thuringians, but the story may be distorted. (For example, the area of Tongeren, now in Belgium, may have been intended.[7])
More clearly, correspondence is recorded with a kingdom of Thuringians by Procopius and Cassiodorus during the reigns of Theoderic the Great (454–526) and Clovis I (approx. 466–511), after the downfall of Attila and Odoacer.
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References
- ↑ Hoops, Johannes (1981), "Thuringii p.512", Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 4, ISBN 9783110065138
- ↑ Buchberger, Erica (2018). "Thuringians". In Nicholson, Oliver (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191744457.
- ↑ Schutz, Herbert. The Germanic Realms in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400–750. American University Studies, Series IX: History, Vol. 196. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. p.402.
- ↑ H. B., Dewing (1962). Procopius. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 255
- ↑ Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568, p.39, citing B. Schmidt.
- ↑ Goffart, Walter (2006). Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812239393. p.216
- ↑ Halsall p.392