Frankish Table of Nations
The Frankish Table of Nations (
The Table is called "Frankish" after the origin of the surviving manuscript tradition, not the origin of the work itself. In structure it is similar to the "
The Table was probably composed in the
Title
In 1851, Karl Müllenhoff assigned the text the name by which it is now generally known—Frankish Table of Nations, or fränkische Völkertafel—because he thought it was written from the perspective of a Frank of about the year 520.[1] Georg Heinrich Pertz, in the first published notice of the text from 1824, called it Populorum Germanorum generatio ("generation of the peoples of the Germans").[2] Müllenhoff himself, in his edition of Tacitus' Germania, included it in an appendix as the Generatio regum et gentium ("generation of kings and peoples").[3] Bruno Krusch calls the addition to manuscript D containing the Table De gentilium et barbarorum generationibus ("on the generations of peoples and barbarians").[4] David Dumville, in an appendix to his edition of the Historia Brittonum, calls it the Genealogiae Gentium ("genealogies of nations").[5] Walter Goffart in his edition based on all surviving manuscripts places it under the title Generatio Gentium ("generation of peoples").[1]
In three manuscripts the Table appears under a rubric (title). In manuscript A it is Incipit generatio regum ("[here] begins the generation of kings") and in B Item de regibus Romanorum ("item on the kings of the Romans").[6] In M, it is Hieronymus in cronicis ("Jerome in chronicles"). This mystifying rubric suggests that the copyist saw a connection between the Table and the Chronicon of Jerome or something in that tradition. A chronicle falsely attributed to Jerome is found in manuscript F.[7]
Origins
Date
Müllenhoff dated the Table to around 520, while Krusch favoured the late 7th or early 8th century, since he believed that the list of Roman kings that accompanies the text in some manuscripts was an integral part of it and could not be earlier than the late
Place
The Frankish Table of Nations was composed either in
The main argument in favour of an Italian origin is the use of the Germania of Tacitus.[11] No surviving work earlier than this one made use of it, and the only other author to make use of it before the 9th century was Cassiodorus in Ostrogothic Italy. This is proof for the circulation of the Germania in Italy in the early 6th century.[14] It is not known with certainty to have ever been available in the Byzantine Empire, although it may be quoted in the 7th-century Strategikon of Maurice.[11]
The content of the text provides evidence of a Byzantine origin, and its purpose is readily related to the interest of the emperors
Authorship
The author of the Table is unknown. Although there have been many past attempts to determine his ethnicity or nationality from internal evidence, the Table does not obviously glorify or denigrate any people in particular. Müllenhoff argued for the Frankish identity of the author and gave the Table its conventional name. Many arguments for a Frankish author would apply equally well to a Gothic one. Ferdinand Lot suggested that he was an Alan cleric.[16]
Goffart argues that if the author was writing in Ostrogothic Italy he was probably a Roman and not a Goth (despite the fact that he does place the Goths first among the nations).[11] Evans suggests he was an Ostrogoth.[13] If writing in the Byzantine Empire, he was most likely a resident of Constantinople, the seat of power.[11] In favour of the Byzantine hypothesis, Goffart argues that the Table represents "the ethnic panorama of the current West as seen from a metropolitan angle of vision".[15]
Manuscripts
Independent
Separate recensions of the Table are found in seven manuscripts.
- A. St Gall Stiftsbibliothek, 732 at folios 154–155.
Written in Carolingian minuscule in the first third of the 9th century, not necessarily at the Abbey of Saint Gall. The codex also contains a copy of the Lex Alamannorum, a couple of religious tracts and several other chronological texts.[18]
- B. Paris, Lex Salica and a Frankish king list. Two copies of this manuscript were made in the 15th century, Vaticanus Ottobonianus 3081 and Paris lat. 4631.[19]
- C. Rome, Desiderius of Monte Cassino (1058–1086), as argued by Ludwig Bethmann,[20] or perhaps earlier (c. 974), still in southern Italy.[21] There are several copies of Vat. lat. 5001, including Vat. lat. 5000. The manuscript's other contents have a south Italian focus and are historical and legal in nature, including the Chronicon Salernitanum and the chronicle of Erchempert.[20]
- D. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 609 at folio 28V.
This small and well-used manuscript was written injoca monachorum. This manuscript was once held by the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges.[22] Goffart provides an edition of the joca at the end of his edition of the Table.[23]
- E. Origo gentis Langobardorum and Edictum Rothari in which the Table was inserted after completion before the first folio, although probably by the original compilers.[24] The hand of the insert appears to match that of the last quire.[25]
- F. Karlsruhe, Pippin of Italy and Prince Grimoald III of Benevento, which has been taken to indicate an origin in Abruzzo. Material in Carolingian minuscule was added later, probably at Reichenau. It contains computistic, chronological, theological and grammatical texts, including several works by Isidore of Seville, a chronicle falsely attributed to Jerome and a world map.[26]
- M. Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, 384 at folio 136.
Written in Beneventan script in the early 10th century with some slightly later additions. It is part of a florilegium of otherwise classical and patristic writings and Alcuin. The letter M comes from the first letter in its version of the Table, which begins Mulius rex...[7]
The manuscripts can be grouped by origin, with ABCD originating north of the Alps and EMF originating in Italy. AB and EMF appear to derive from a common source.[10] In their treatment of the Table of Nations, the manuscripts can be grouped in several other ways. ACDEF treat it as filler, unconnected to the rest of their contents, while only BM integrate it fully. It is found with historical texts in A, legal texts in BCE and sacred texts in DFM.[27] The texts of the Table in E and M are identical,[7] probably because M was the model for E.[21] According to Walter Pohl, the manuscripts CEM are all the product of a strategy of identity-building at Monte Cassino.[28]
Historia Brittonum
The Table was incorporated into the Historia Brittonum (written c. 830), where it is fully integrated into a series of genealogical texts.[27] It follows the generations of Noah from Genesis, of which the Table itself may be an imitation,[29] and is followed by a genealogy tracing the three brothers' descent from Adam.[30] As in EMF, in the Historia Brittonum the main genealogy is connected to a single royal Roman progenitor.[10]
The version of the Table in the Historia is related to that in F and derives ultimately from an Italian version.[10] The Table can be found in §§13–16 of the Harleian recension of the Historia,[31] §7 of the Vatican recension,[32] ch. 13 of the Sawley recension[33] and §9 of the Chartres manuscript.[34] In the manuscript Harley 3859 copied around 1100,[35] which includes the Table, the Historia is interpolated by a 10th-century set of Welsh genealogies.[36]
The Historia is the only work prior to the 19th century to make actual use of the Table. A widely copied text, it ensured the Table a wide diffusion.[27] There are three Gaelic versions of the Table derived from the Harleian Historia: in the Lebor Bretnach, a mid-11th-century translation of the Historia; in one recension of the late 11th-century historical compilation Lebor Gabála Érenn; and in the 11th-century Middle Irish Sex aetates mundi.[37][38] In the 12th century, Lambert of Saint-Omer incorporated the text of the Table from a copy of the Historia into his encyclopaedic Liber Floridus.[39] Another 12th-century writer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, was also influenced by the genealogical material in the Historia, including the Frankish Table.[40]
Transmission
The Table was probably brought to the
All surviving copies of the Table derive from a Frankish copy made probably in the late 7th or 8th century.
Two features common to all manuscripts are probably emendations by an early Frankish copyist: the introduction of the term Walagothi in place of an unknown original and the addition of the Saxons to the original list of twelve nations.
In every manuscript, the Frankish Table of Nations appears attached to other texts. In AB, the Table follows a list of Roman kings and precedes a list of Frankish kings; in C, it is followed by a list of Frankish and Bavarian lawgivers; in D, it comes as the answer to the last of eight questions in a joca monachorum; and in EMF, the main genealogy is connected to a single royal Roman progenitor. This demonstrates that the core text once circulated independently without any Roman kings or any father to the three brothers.[10] Goffart's edition covers the Table itself and the additions.[30]
Text
Earliest attainable version
The Table circulated as what Léopold Genicot called a "living text" (texte vivant), a text in which every copy becomes a new edition and not merely a witness to the original.[17] It is thus impossible to produce an Urtext (original version) from surviving witnesses.[1] Goffart provides what he calls the "earliest attainable version", essentially a composite of what is common to all witnesses.[10]
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Variations
The spelling in the manuscripts is erratic and follows no rule.[45] Inguo may be spelled Tingus or Nigueo; Istio becomes Scius or Hostius; the Gepids are sometimes Brigidos or Cybedi; the Thuringians are Loringus or Taringi; in one the Goths and Walagoths become Butes and Gualangutos.[30]
In manuscripts AB, the Table is preceded by a list of Roman kings that begins with a "first king of the Romans" (primus rex Romanorum) named Analeus (A) or Allanius (B). In F, Alaneus is the father of the three brothers, while in the Historia Alanus is the father and also the "first man who came to Europe" (primus homo uenit ad Europam) of the nation of Japheth, son of Noah. In EM, the father of the brothers is called King Mulius.[30]
The Table contains what is probably the earliest reference to the Bavarians. The next reference to them is in the Getica from about 551.[46][47] The spelling in the manuscripts can provide no evidence for the early spelling or pronunciation of the Bavarians' name.[45] The spellings given are Baioarius (A), Baweros (B), Baioeros (C), Bawarios (D), Baioarios (EMF) and Boguarii or Bogari (in the Historia).[48][49] Thomas Hodgkin took the Boguarii to be the Bulgarians.[50]
Manuscript F departs most radically from the standard text.
Some copies of the Historia also change the Romans into Latins (Latini) and the Alamanni into Albani.[30][51] The latter may be explained as the work of a Welsh copyist for whom m and b were interchangeable,[52] but more probably reflects another modernization or updating of the Table to better reflect the reality known to a scribe working in northern Wales between 857 and 912, who would have been more familiar with the land and people of Alba (Scotland), a kingdom just forming at that time, than Alemannia.[53][54] Patrich Wadden sets out tables displaying all the variations in the different recensions of the Historia and its Gaelic descendants.[55]
Analysis
The names of the three brothers are derived from the Germania of Tacitus. According to Tacitus, "the author of [the Germanic] race" was named
The thirteen nations selected for inclusion in the Table are contemporary with the author.[14] The selection is not derived from Tacitus nor does it include any anachronistic names. If it is an attempt to list the Germanic peoples, then the author conceives of the Romans and Bretons as Germans. Possibly the author considered Germani to be synonymous with Westerners or Europeans, although the Vandals lived in Africa at the time.[45]
The first two nations named—the Goths without any qualifier and the Walagoths, that is, foreign Goths—represent the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths.[43] Most likely, the Ostrogoths are the first and the Visigoths the second. It is probable that a Germanic-speaking editor in the Frankish kingdom replaced the by then rare term Visigoths with a Germanic gloss. "Foreign" in this case means "Romance-speaking" and refers to the "romanized" Visigoths of Spain and southern Gaul.[41] Herwig Wolfram glosses the term as "Roman Goths"[56] and Wadden as "Welsh Goths".[57]
The assignment of the contemporary nations to Tacitean categories was made on the basis of Tacitus' descriptions. The author of the Table took "those of the centre" to mean the most prominent and assigned the most prominent nations of his time to the first group, the Herminones.[46] These, minus the Saxons, form a quartet common in Byzantine literature. Procopius in On the Wars defines the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths and Gepids as the "Gothic nations" that "all came originally from one tribe". The same quartet is also found in Cyril of Scythopolis' Life of Sabbas, written about 556.[58] They were all Arian Christians and major enemies of the Byzantine Empire in the early 6th century.[46] Besides the Table, Theophanes the Confessor (c. 800), Landolfus Sagax (c. 1000) and Nikephoros Kallistos (c. 1320) all preserve this quartet of nations from early Byzantine historiography.[59] The Saxons are thought to be a later addition to the Table by a Frankish editor.[41]
The second group, the Ingaevones, are those nearest the ocean, taken to be the nations north of Italy and east of Gaul. The remainder were the westernmost nations, a miscellany of Germanic and non-Germanic peoples that make up the third group. They represent the peoples of the Frankish kingdoms. It is possibly significant that the Table was composed shortly after the death of Clovis I (511), founder of the Merovingian Frankish kingdom when its continued cohesion was in question and its component peoples may have appeared more independent.[46]
The use of the Table in the Carolingian Empire can be read as part of an effort to integrate Roman and Frankish history.[12] There is a parallel between the placement of the Franks, Britons and Romans as brothers in the Table and the claims of each of those people to Trojan ancestry: the Romans through Aeneas, the Merovingians through Francus and the Britons through Brutus (Britto).[51][60] The only copy of the Table that connects it directly with the Trojan claims, however, is that found in the Historia,[61] which is also the only one that connects it with the generations of Noah.[51]
The introduction of the Tuscans in place of the Thuringians first occurs in manuscript M from the early 10th century and was followed in E, written around 1005. The change has been linked to the creation of a distinct regional Tuscan identity after the fall of the
All versions of the Historia Brittonum interpose between the brothers and the nations invented names for the founding fathers of the nations, mimicking the decision of the original author of the Table to create names for the brothers based on the names of their peoples.[53] The intervening layer reads:[63]
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Some versions have Alemannus instead of Albanus.
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Goffart 1983, p. 115.
- ^ a b c Goffart 1983, p. 98.
- ^ Müllenhoff 1873, pp. 163–164.
- ^ Goffart 1983, p. 104.
- ^ Dumville 1975, pp. 876–880.
- ^ Goffart 1983, p. 110.
- ^ a b c Goffart 1983, p. 105.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 113–114.
- ^ Goffart 1983, p. 117.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Goffart 1983, p. 114.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Goffart 1983, pp. 122–123.
- ^ a b c d Reimitz 2015, pp. 82–83.
- ^ a b c Evans 2015, p. 142 n43.
- ^ a b c Goffart 1983, p. 118.
- ^ a b Goffart 1983, p. 125.
- ^ Goffart 1983, p. 116.
- ^ a b Goffart 1983, p. 100.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 100–101.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 101–102.
- ^ a b c Goffart 1983, pp. 102–103.
- ^ a b c Stoffella 2013, p. 277.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 103–104.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 128–130.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 105–106.
- ^ Stoffella 2013, p. 278.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 106–109.
- ^ a b c Goffart 1983, p. 109.
- ^ Stoffella 2013, p. 277, citing Pohl 2001, pp. 138–139.
- ^ Goffart 1983, p. 127.
- ^ a b c d e f g Goffart 1983, pp. 110–112.
- ^ Dumville 1975, pp. 180–183.
- ^ Dumville 1975, pp. 401–402.
- ^ Dumville 1975, pp. 635–636.
- ^ Dumville 1975, pp. 329–330.
- ^ Dumville 1975, p. 124.
- ^ Dumville 1975, p. 126.
- ^ a b Evans 2015, pp. 137–139.
- ^ Wadden 2012, pp. 208–209.
- ^ Dumville 1975, pp. 367–369.
- ^ Thornton 1998, p. 95.
- ^ a b c d e f Goffart 1983, pp. 125–126.
- ^ Reimitz 2015, p. 83, citing Pohl 2001.
- ^ a b Goffart 1983, p. 120.
- ^ Wadden 2016, p. 27.
- ^ a b c Goffart 1983, p. 119.
- ^ a b c d Goffart 1983, p. 124.
- ^ Hammer 2007, p. 34 n24.
- ^ Goffart 1983, p. 111.
- ^ Dumville 1975, p. 329.
- ^ Hodgkin 1902, p. 13.
- ^ a b c Pohl 1997, p. 16.
- ^ Brugger 1928, p. 2.
- ^ a b Evans 2015, pp. 143–144.
- ^ a b Wadden 2012, p. 216.
- ^ Wadden 2012, pp. 214–215.
- ^ Wolfram 1988, p. 26.
- ^ Wadden 2012, p. 210.
- ^ Goffart 1983, pp. 120–121.
- ^ Friedrich 1910, p. 14.
- ^ Pohl 2003, p. 13.
- ^ Jankulak 2010, pp. 39–40.
- ^ Stoffella 2013, pp. 280–285.
- ^ Evans 2015, pp. 135–136.
- ^ Evans 2015, pp. 142–143.
- ^ a b c Evans 2015, p. 138.
- ^ a b Cowan 1984, pp. 117–121.
- ^ Fraser 2011, p. 27.
- ^ Evans 2015, p. 146.
- ^ Evans 2015, pp. 145–146.
- ^ Evans 2015, p. 148.
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{{cite journal}}
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- Wadden, Patrick (2016). "The Frankish Table of Nations in Insular Historiography". Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies. 72: 1–31.
- Wolfram, Herwig (1988). History of the Goths. University of California Press.