Salian Franks

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"Salians" redirects here. For the eleventh-century dynasty, see Salian dynasty. For the Roman priests, see Salii.
Julian the Apostate made them dediticii
.
  Roman Empire
  Salian Franks
  Germanic tribes east of the Rhine

The Salian Franks, also called the Salians (

Greek: Σάλιοι, Salioi), were a northwestern subgroup of the early Franks who appear in the historical record in the fourth and fifth centuries. They lived west of the Lower Rhine in what was then the Roman Empire and today the Netherlands and Belgium
.

The traditional historiography sees the Salians as one of the main divisions of the Franks alongside the

Ripuarians. Recent scholarship, however, has often questioned the ethnic significance of both these terms.[1]

Etymology

Various etymologies are proposed. The ethnonym is unrelated to the name for the dancing priests of Mars, who were also called Salii. In line with theories that the Salians already existed as a tribe outside the Roman Empire, the name may have derived from the name of the IJssel river, formerly called Hisloa or Hisla, and in ancient times, Sala, which may be the Salians' original residence.[2] Today this area is called Salland.

Alternatively, the name may derive from a proposed

Germanic word *saljon meaning friend or comrade, indicating that the term initially implied an alliance.[3] In that case, the name may have originated in the empire itself, or the river and/or region might be named after the inhabitants (rather than the reverse).[4]

Origins

The Salians, unlike other Franks, first appear living inside the Roman Empire, living in the Rhine delta in the modern Netherlands. Although often treated as a tribe it has also been argued by

Toxandria (both within the empire), by the non-Roman Chamavi. The account implies that they entered into the civitas of Tongeren. The first historian to say that the Salians had been pushed into the empire from outside was Zosimus, but his description of events seems [according to whom?
] to be confused and derived from others.

The account of Zosimus, that the Salians had been pushed into the empire as a single tribe, is still often accepted.[citation needed] In this case, their homeland may have been between the Rhine and the IJssel in the modern day Dutch region of the Veluwe, Gelderland, and they may have given their name to the region of Salland.[4] It has also been proposed that the Salii might have been one of the peoples making up the large nation of the Chauci during the Roman Empire, most of whom apparently became Saxons. (The difference between Saxons and Franks in the earliest records which mention them is not clear.)[6]

In 358, the Salians came to some form of agreement with the Romans, which allowed them to keep settlements south of the delta in Toxandria, between the rivers Scheldt, Meuse, and Demer, roughly the area of the Campine, which contains the modern Dutch province of North Brabant, and adjacent parts of the two bordering Belgian Limburg and Antwerp Provinces.

History

The first mention of Franks in the area was about 286 AD, during the reign of emperor

Straits of Dover against Saxon and Frankish pirates.[7] In the time of Probus there is also record of a large group who decided to hijack some Roman ships and return with them from the Black Sea – reaching the Atlantic after causing chaos through Greece, Sicily and Gibraltar.[8] It has been proposed that the meaning of the term Frank changed over time and that these pirate Franks were actually Frisii, or some other coastal people.[9] Centuries before the Vikings
, the term "Saxon" came to refer to coastal Germanic groups specialised in raiding Roman territories by boat, whereas the Franks were strongly associated with the inland Rhine region.

In the later period when the Salians first appear in the record, the term Frank was not associated with seafaring or coastal tribes. Their origins before they lived in Batavia are uncertain. Much later, it was only Zosimus, and not Ammianus Marcellinus whose work he possibly partly followed, who claimed that the Salians had once lived under the same name outside the Roman Empire, saying that they had been forced away by Saxons, and had come to share control of Batavia with the Romans. Whatever their origins, Zosimus says they were being pushed out of Batavia by a Saxon group known as the "Kouadoi", a Greek spelling of "Quadi" which some authors believe might be a misunderstanding for the Frankish Chamavi, who were mentioned by Ammianus.[10]

According to Zosimus, these Saxons had used boats on the Rhine to get around other Frankish tribes who effectively protected the Roman frontier, and into the Roman river delta. The emperor

Julian the Apostate took the opportunity to allow the Salii to settle in Toxandria, south of Batavia, where they had previously been expelled:

"[Julian] commanded his army to attack them briskly; but not to kill any of the Salii, or prevent them from entering the Roman territories, because they came not as enemies, but were forced there [...] As soon as the Salii heard of the kindness of emperor Julian the Apostate, some of them went with their king into the Roman territory, and others fled to the extremity of their country, but all humbly committed their lives and fortunes to Caesar's gracious protection."[11]

Movement of the Salian Franks from the Rhine–Meuse area to the Scheldt delta in c.400–450

The Salians were then brought into Roman units defending the empire from other Frankish raiders. Ammianus Marcellinus (late 4th century), on the other hand, mentions the Chamavi, normally considered Frankish, as the Germanic tribe who had entered the empire in this area at this time. Unlike the Salii, these Chamavi were expelled from Roman lands. Their grain was disappointingly unready for Roman use.[12]

In a poem from 400, Claudian celebrates Stilicho's pacification of the Germani using names of people which may only be poetic: "Salian now tills his fields, the Sygambrian beats his straight sword into a curved sickle". (The Sugambri had apparently long ago been defeated and moved by the Romans.)[13]

From the first half of the fifth century onwards, a group of Franks pushed south west through the boundary of the Roman inhabited

Carbonaria Silva
from a fort named Dispargum, which was in "Thuringia". The most common interpretations of these names are neither in Salian Batavia nor in Toxandria.

In 451, Chlodio's opponent

Catalaunian Fields in a temporary alliance with Romans and Visigoths
, which temporarily ended the Hunnic threat to Western Europe.

The

Notitia dignitatum listing Roman military units in the 5th century mentions the Salii iuniores Gallicani based in Hispania, the Salii seniores based in Gaul. There is also record of a numerus Saliorum.[15]

Signet ring of Childeric I, king of the Salian Franks from 457 to 481. Inscription CHILDIRICI REGIS ("of Childeric the king").[16] Found in his tomb at Tournai, now in the Monnaie de Paris

While their relationship to Chlodio is uncertain,

Carolingians
, who came from a northern area around the river Meuse in what is now Belgium and the southern Netherlands.

In Gaul, a fusion of Roman and Germanic societies was occurring. During the period of Merovingian rule, the Franks began to

Roman Catholic Church. Unlike their Gothic, Burgundic and Lombardic counterparts, who adopted Arianism
, the Salians adopted Catholic Christianity early on; giving them a relationship with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their subjects in conquered territories.

The division of the Frankish kingdom among Clovis’s four sons (511) was an event that would repeat in Frankish history over more than four centuries. By then, the Salic Law had established the exclusive right to succession of male descendants. This principle turned out to be an exercise in interpretation, rather than the simple implementation of a new model of succession. No trace of an established practice of territorial division can be discovered among Germanic peoples other than the Franks.

The later

Lex Salica
. On the other hand, following the interpretation of Springer the Lex Salica may simply have meant something like "Common Law".

Culture

See also:
Frankish mythology

Apart from some isolated fragments, there is no record of the Salian Frankish language but it is presumed to be ancestral to the modern family of Low Franconian dialects, which are represented today by Dutch and Flemish dialects, and Afrikaans.

Before the Merovingian takeover, the Salian tribes apparently constituted a loose confederacy that only occasionally banded together, for example to negotiate with Roman authority. Each tribe consisted of extended family groups centered on a particularly renowned or noble family. The importance of the family bond was made clear by the

Salic Law
, which ordained that an individual had no right to protection if not part of a family.

While the Goths or the Vandals had been at least partly converted to Christianity since the mid-4th century, polytheistic beliefs are thought to have flourished among the Salian Franks until the conversion of Clovis to Catholicism shortly before or after 500, after which paganism diminished gradually.[20] On the other hand it is possible many Salians in Gaul were already Arian Christians, like contemporary Germanic kingdoms.[19]

Notes

  1. ^ Dierkens & Périn 2003, pp. 166–167.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ISBN 9789077922736
  4. ^ a b Naam regio: Salland (in Dutch), p.6, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed
  5. ^ Latin: Francos, eos videlicet quos consuetudo Salios appellavit. Latin,English.
  6. ^ Ulrich Nonn, Die Franken, p.82
  7. ^ Eutropius, Abridgement of Roman History Book IX:21
  8. Latin Panegyric to Constantius Chlorus, [1]
    .
  9. ^ Lanting; van der Plicht (2010) pp.67&73
  10. ^ Lanting; van der Plicht (2010) p.69; Nonn p.26
  11. ^ Zosimus Nova Historia Book III
  12. ^ Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, Book XVII-8
  13. ^ "LacusCurtius • Claudian — on the Consulship of Stilicho, Book 1".
  14. ISBN 9789077922736
    . Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  15. ^ Nonn p.26
  16. ^ G. Salaün, A. McGregor & P. Périn, "Empreintes inédites de l'anneau sigillaire de Childéric Ier : état des connaissances", Antiquités Nationales, 39 (2008), pp. 217–224 (esp. 218).
  17. ^ a b Pfister, Christian (1911). "Merovingians" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 172–172.
  18. ^ See for example James p.58.
  19. ^ a b Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568 (Cambridge University Press), p. 308
  20. ^ K. Fischer Drew, The laws of the Salian Franks. Translated and with an Introduction by Katherine Fischer Drew (1991), 6

Bibliography

Primary sources

Secondary sources

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