Ripuarian Franks
Ripuarian or Rhineland Franks (Latin: Ripuarii or Ribuarii) were one of the two main groupings of early
Both the Salii and Ripuarii were new names and represented new groupings of older tribal groups on the Roman Rhine border. The ancestors of the Ripuarii originally lived on the right bank of the Rhine, where there had been a long history of friendly and unfriendly contact. Under pressure from their northern enemies, the Saxons, they were first able to infiltrate the left bank of the Rhine in 274 AD. In the chaotic years after the definitive collapse of Roman power in western Europe, they managed to occupy the Roman city of Cologne and the lower and middle Rhineland in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia.
Few historical details are known before the Rhineland kingdom eventually became an important part of the
On the right bank of the Rhine, the Ripuarian Franks had control over the river basin of the Main, in later years also called Franconia, one of the five stem duchies, from which in the middle of the 9th century the kingdom of Germany was formed.
In the 7th century a law code for Austrasia was published as the Lex Ripuaria. After the reign of the last capable Salian Frankish king, Dagobert I in 639, the Carolingian Austrasian mayordomos gradually took over power, transforming Austrasia into the heartland of the Carolingian Empire.
Name
The name Ripuarii clearly has a meaning of "river people", but the exact way in which the name developed is unclear and may have involved both Latin and Germanic.
The regular Latin form would be Riparii, meaning "[men] of the river bank". The term "milites rip(ari)ensis" was a Latin term used for border soldiers on river frontiers, at least on the Danube and Rhône.
The form Ripuarii is irregular, however, and has been explained by a hypothetical native (Germanic) name underlying the Latin. This hypothetical self-designation might be restored as either *hreop-waren, *hrepa-waren "river[-bank] people".[2] or *hreop-wehren, *hrepa-wehren "river[-bank] defenders".[3]
Conversely, the form Ripuarii may also be due to a loan of the Latin Riparii into Germanic.[4] This view is based on a word-pair given in the Summarium Heinrici, an 11th-century revision of Isidore of Seville, stating the Old High German equivalents of some Latin words, including Ripuarii: Riphera. The latter is textually reconstructed to *ripfera, except that "phonetically *ripf- cannot come from rip-;"[5]
A third possibility is that the name Ripuarii was a mixed word to begin with, perhaps *ripwarjoz.[6] It seems to be analogous to the later formation, Ribuarius, in which Gallo-Roman *ribbar replaces Roman ripa. From the Gallo-Roman came the French rive, "bank," and a group of words based on it.
History
The term Franks first appears in the 3rd century on the right bank of the Rhine. Tribes who had lived in the same area in Roman times included the Sicambri, Chamavi, Bructeri, Chattuarii, and Tencteri. The Franks replaced those older tribes in the record and most probably represent a new alliance of all or some of them.
These independent Franks crossed the Rhine frequently to establish bases there from which they raided further into the Roman empire. The Romans eventually bought peace by exchanging freedom to settle on the left bank for cooperation in maintaining the peace. Many of these Franks rose to high office in the empire.
In the area of the Ripuarii, the Rhine had been defined as a border of the Roman empire under the early emperors. The Romans created two provinces:
.Long before the Franks, the Romanized
The Ripuarian Franks lost their independence almost as soon as they entered the historical record, being subsumed in the Frankish core province of
In 509 he sent a messenger to
Arriving in person Clovis assembled the citizens of Cologne, denied the murders, saying "It is not for me to shed the blood of one of my fellow kings, for that is a crime …" He advised them to place themselves under his protection, after which he was shouted into office by a voice vote and raised up on their shields in a ceremony of installation.[9] Thus the independent kingdom of the Ripuarian Franks was voted out of existence by the people at a single assembly in 509.
Gregory says
After the death of Lothar (561) his four sons inherited the kingdom jointly. Sigibert received the share formerly Theuderic's (Austrasia) and set up a capital at
Language
There are no direct attestations of the early Frankish language. Of some 1,400 Latin inscriptions in Roman
Ripuarian laws
In the first half of the 7th century the Ripuarians received the Ripuarian law (Lex Ripuaria), a law code applying only to them, from the dominating Salian Franks. The Salians, following the custom of the Romans before them, were mainly re-authorizing laws already in use by the Ripuarians, so that the latter could retain their local constitution.[17]
See also
- Franks
- Salian Franks
- List of Germanic tribes
Footnotes
- ^ Nonn p.145 citing Ewig. Also see Springer.
- Anglo-Saxon word, hreopseta, "settlement on a bank (or river)." The -waren would be from Germanic *weraz, "people" Köbler, Gerhard (2000). "*uei-(3)"(PDF). Indogermanisches Wörterbuch (in German) (3rd ed.).
- ^ The -wehren would be from Germanic *warjan, "defend," Köbler, Gerhard (2000). "*uer-(5)" (PDF). Indogermanisches Wörterbuch (in German) (3rd ed.).
- ^ Köbler, Gerhard (1993). "Rifera" (PDF). Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (in German) (4th ed.).
- ^ Springer, Matthias (1998), "Riparii - Ribuarier - Rheinfranken", in Geuenich, Dieter (ed.), Die Franken und die Alemannen bis zur "Schlacht bei Zülpich" (496/97) (in German), Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, p. 211 "Lautergesetzlich kann *ripf nicht aus rip entstanden sein."
- ^ Springer, M. (1968–2007) [1900], "Ribuarier", in Jankuhn, Herbert; Hoops, Johannes (eds.), Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (in German), Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 570
- ^ Germania, Section 28.
- ^ Paragraph 191
- ^ II.40.
- ^ IV.13.
- ^ III.27.
- ^ III.20.
- ^ II.28.
- ^ IV.16.
- ^ see also Derks, Ton; Jefferis, Christine (1998). Gods, temples and ritual practices: the transformation of religious ideas and values in Roman Gaul. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 86–90.
- ^ Wiggers 2007, p. 26.
- ^ Rivers 1986:_?.
References
- Greenwood, Thomas (1836). The First Book of the History of the Germans: Barbaric period. London: Longman, Rees, Orne, and Co..
- Howorth, Henry H. (1884). "XVII. The Ethnology of Germany (Part VI). The Varini, Varangians and Franks. - Section II" (PDF). JSTOR 2841727.
- Nonn, Ulrich (1983), Pagus und Comitatus in Niederlothringen. Untersuchungen zur politischen Raumgliederung im früheren Mittelalter
- Nonn, Ulrich (2010), Die Franken
- Perry, Walter Copland (1857). The Franks, from their first appearance in history to the death of King Pepin. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts.
- Pfister, M. Christian (1911), "(B) The Franks Before Clovis", in Bury, J.B. (ed.), The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. I: The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms, London: Cambridge University Press
- Rivers, Theodore John. (1986) Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks. New York: AMS Press, 1986.
- Wiggers, Heiko (2007). Reevaluating diglossia: Data from Low German (Dissertation). Ann Arbor: ProQuest.
External links
- "France: History: Origins: Early Frankish Period". Britannica Online. Retrieved 1 November 2007.
- "Franci Ripuarii in 400". euratlas. 2009.